Sahlin turns to party old guard for election surge

Party leader Mona Sahlin is joined by Ylva Johansson, Thomas Bodström, Sven-Erik Österberg, Ibrahim Baylan, Leif Pagrotsky, Thomas Östros and Carin Jämtin as the people chosen to lead the campaign for the election.

The eight leading party politicians will be backed up by an army of “election workers, bloggers, tweeters, mailshot dispensers, bill posters, local activists and cold-callers, and first and foremost all those who will cast their votes for the Social Democrats on September 19 to ensure the long-awaited change of government will take place,” the party writes in a statement on Tuesday.

Mona Sahlin laid out the results of early negotiations with left-green coalition partners in an opinion article in the Dagens Nyheter daily on Tuesday.

The party presented four new policy goals – more jobs, more education, less child poverty, and less dependency on social welfare.

With regard to jobs, Sahlin presented a target of 80 percent employment among those aged 20 to 64. This will be achieved by special efforts for young people and those newly arrived in Sweden.

The education goal involves half of all young people starting higher education studies before the age of 25.

Child poverty will be cut by raising supplementary child allowances, student supplementary child allowances, and increased maintenance support for single parents. The goal is for the number of children in families dependent on social welfare will be cut by 50,000 by 2015.

Finally the Social Democrats want to cut those on social welfare by 25 percent by 2015, with an eventual goal of cutting 2010 numbers in half.

The Social Democrats, together with the Left Party and the Green Party, have previously said that concrete costed initiatives will be forthcoming when they present their joint budget proposition on May 3rd.