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ANALYSIS: Löfven’s return as Swedish PM carries ‘high price’ for all

The four-party deal struck on Friday that would allow Stefan Löfven to remain Sweden’s prime minister will require serious concessions on all sides, Swedish media from across the political spectrum wrote on Saturday.

Published: 12 January 2019 13:11 CET
ANALYSIS: Löfven’s return as Swedish PM carries ‘high price’ for all
A tentative deal to return Stefan Löfven to the PM's office has its critics on the right and left. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT
On Friday, Centre Party leader Annie Lööf confirmed that her party – together with the Green Party and Liberals – had struck a deal with the Social Democrats which would allow Löfven to stay on as prime minister.
 
 
As the Swedish media awaited formal confirmation of the deal, attention turned to analyzing the plan’s winners and losers. 
 
Svenska Dagbladet said the proposed deal would mark the end of the center-right Alliance, which consists of the Moderate Party, Liberal Party, Centre Party and the Christian Democrats. In an editorial entitled ‘The Alliance for Sweden (2004-2019)’, the centre-right outlet declared the tentative deal a clear victory for Löfven’s centre-left Social Democrats (S). 
 
“Although the S crowd cried crocodile tears when the settlement became known, very few of them are advocating for S to instead go into opposition. Power is still power,” its editors wrote. 
 
Svenska Dagbladet also wrote that the collapse of the Alliance can also be seen as a victory for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD). The Centre and Liberals refused to back a government made up of their centre-right allies, the Moderates and Christian Democrats, due to the fact it would rely on support from the far-right SD.
 
“Without SD’s presence, the Alliance probably would have survived. The Centre Party has chosen to give them a victory trophy,” the paper wrote. 
 
 
While the paper wrote that Centre and the Liberals could look forward to some of the right-of-centre policies they’ve championed, their policy gains will fall short of “what a united Alliance could have accomplished”.
 
The more left-leaning Aftonbladet also appeared to be skeptical of the deal. The paper's editors wrote that the Social Democrats would have to pay too large a price to stay in power because of the concessions demanded by Centre and the Liberals. 
 
Aftonbladet called the distribution of the parties’ varying priorities “lousy”, pointing to labour law reforms championed by C and L, a weakening of the a-kassa system and the abolishment of rent controls on new properties.
 
The centre-right Dagens Nyheter was more positive about the deal, saying that Lööf’s decision to instruct her party to abstain in a vote on Löfven as PM, thus offering its so-called ‘passive support’, was her best and only choice. The newspaper’s editorial board had previously predicted and expressed its support for the current deal. 
 
“If Lööf had chosen [Moderate leader Ulf] Kristersson [as PM], she would have received [Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie] Åkesson in the bargain. That was never imaginable,” DN wrote. It pointed to the labour law and rental market reforms as clear wins for the centre-right parties. 
 
Göteborgs Posten, which also tilts to the centre-right, wrote that it was optimistic that the new government solution would be “somewhat better” than the previous Löfven government but cautioned that the new constellation was likely to be ineffective because contrary to the four parties’ attempt to present a somewhat united front, there is actually no middle-of-the-road solution but merely “a sprawling constellation with dramatic differences in ideology, whose ability to bring about crucial systemic changes will be very small”.
For members

INSIDE SWEDEN

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

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
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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