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Stefan Löfven’s new cabinet: Who’s in and who’s out?

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven is set to reveal who will be part of his new government today, marking the end of a record-long wait after a general election.

Published: 21 January 2019 07:57 CET

Stefan Löfven's new cabinet: Who's in and who's out?

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven with his wife Ulla on Friday. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Löfven is to address parliament later on Monday morning, and present his new coalition government with ministers representing his Social Democrats and the Green Party.

TIMELINE: Everything that has happened since the Swedish election

Three of the most recognizable names expected to stay on as ministers in the new term are Social Democrats Foreign Minister Margot Wallström, Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist and Labour Market Minister Ylva Johansson, according to Swedish news agency TT.

Another three are leaving their posts and will need to be replaced. They are Education Minister Gustav Fridolin who is standing down as Green Party leader, Social Democrat Migration Minister Heléne Fritzon and Culture and Democracy Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke of the Greens, who are both running for the European Parliament in that election in May.

Some of the ex-ministers rumoured to be on the shortlist for a potential return to cabinet are Anders Ygeman (forced out as interior minister in 2017 over an IT leak at Sweden's Transport Agency) and Aida Hadzialic (who chose to resign in 2016 after she was caught driving while slightly over the limit), both Social Democrats.

Sweden has never before gone this long without a new government after an election.

POLITICS Q&A: Who has been running Sweden since the election?

The 131-day deadlock only ended when Löfven struck a cross-bloc deal with the Centre and Liberal parties, who will allow him to govern in exchange for slightly more right-wing economic policies.

Some of the proposals in the deal include abolishing rent controls on newly built apartments, and introducing language and civics tests for would-be citizens.

FOR MEMBERS: What does Sweden's government deal mean for internationals?

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REVEALED: Sweden Democrats' secret social media 'troll factory'

In the Kalla Fakta programme for broadcaster TV4, a reporter spent five months working undercover for the Sweden Democrats, first on the YouTube channel Riks, previously owned by the party, and later for the party’s communications team.

“I was undercover for a whole year, five months of which I was working [for the party],” Kalla Fakta’s reporter Daniel Andersson told The Local. “Two of them I was on Riks, the YouTube channel, and three of them I was in the communications department.”

During this period, Andersson wore a hidden camera to show how the YouTube channel, which the party claims is independent, is in fact closely linked with the party.

Andersson said he found out about the troll factory just before moving over to the communications department.

“They are in the same office building, Riks rents their office from the Sweden Democrats, so during lunch the departments often met, ate lunch together and talked a lot about it. That’s where I overheard secretive talks about anonymous accounts on social media, and they didn’t want to say what their name was or why they had them.”

The Sweden Democrats are also Riks’ largest source of financing, with daily meetings taking place between the channel’s owner, Jacob Hagnell, and Sweden Democrat head of communications Joakim Wallerstein.

Kalla Fakta’s report revealed that the party’s communications wing has been tasked with managing a large number of anonymous social media accounts, referred to within the party as a “troll factory”, an organised group of fake accounts with the aim of influencing public opinion and debate by spreading pro-Sweden Democrat content.

“We’re going to talk a lot more about how they operate in the next episode, in a week,” Andersson said. “But what we saw very early was that it was very, very systematic, it’s organised. And the purpose is to create a huge load of posts on different social media to create an illusion of the fact that the Sweden Democrats and their image of the world and of Sweden is larger than it is.”

“The boss is Joakim Wallerstein, the communications chief of the Sweden Democrats. He’s also the mastermind behind this – we also identified Riks as a part of it, where he is creating a conservative ecosystem, troll factory, to manipulate people’s views of the world,” he added.

Back in 2022, the Sweden Democrats were accused of running a “troll factory” by left-wing newspaper Dagens ETC. At the time, the party rejected the accusations, calling ETC’s article “unserious and obvious activism” in an email to SVT, while admitting that a group called Battlefield, responsible for moderating the party’s comments boxes on social media, did exist at one point.

In the new Kalla Fakta programme and in another interview with Dagens ETC, Wallerstein admits that these anonymous accounts exist, although he rejects the term “troll factory”.

“I don’t think I’ve been running so called troll sites, for the simple reason that I haven’t been spreading false information,” he told Kalla Fakta.

Andersson believes this is nothing more than damage control from the party.

“He doesn’t want to acknowledge that it is a troll factory. He doesn’t see a problem with the fact that they are anonymous, or the fact that the connection to the party is hidden,” Andersson said.

By Paul O’Mahony and Becky Waterton

Hear TV4’s reporter Daniel Andersson explain more about the investigation in the next episode of The Local’s podcast, Sweden in Focus. Out on Friday, May 10th.

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