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Centre-right Alliance declines offer of ‘cross-bloc’ parliamentary speaker

Sweden's Social Democrats have called for discussion on presenting a 'cross-bloc' candidate for parliamentary speaker, but the centre-right parties show no sign of accepting the offer.

Published: 18 September 2018 14:00 CEST

Centre-right Alliance declines offer of 'cross-bloc' parliamentary speaker

Anders Ygeman, the Social Democrats' parliamentary group leader, and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. Photo: Claudio Bresciani/TT

“We are reaching out a hand and saying that we can find a way to collaborate and solve this,” said Prime Minister Stefan Löfven after announcing his party would not be putting forward its own candidate.

“If we can't come to agreements between the blocs, in practice it will be the Sweden Democrats who decide,” said Anders Ygeman, the Social Democrats' parliamentary group leader, referring to the far-right party which gained 17.6 percent of the vote. The two main blocs were both on around 40 percent of the vote, meaning they will need passive backing from other parties to form a workable government.

Löfven and Ygeman made the suggestion after the party's new parliamentary group had its first meeting on Tuesday. The vote for a new speaker will take place on Monday, an event Löfven said would be the first test for cross-bloc collaboration.

Usually, the speaker is a member of Sweden's largest political party or bloc, meaning that after the September 9th election, a Social Democrat candidate would have been expected. The role is a key one, as it is the speaker who puts a proposal for the new prime minister to parliament.

After an election which reduced the centre-left bloc's lead to just one seat, it's unclear what Sweden's next government will look like, and cross-bloc collaboration will be crucial.

However, the centre-right Alliance parties were not positive about the idea of a jointly proposed speaker.

“This isn't a new suggestion from the Social Democrats. The Alliance has been clear the whole time that we present a mutual candidate for speaker,” said the Moderate Party's group leader, Tobias Billström, in a written statement.

Catch up on all The Local's election coverage HERE

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Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here.

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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