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POLITICS

The 5 moments and crises that define the Stefan Löfven era

Stefan Löfven is stepping down as leader of the Social Democrats and as Sweden's prime minister, a position he has held since 2014. Here's a look back at some of the defining moments of his career.

sweden's outgoing prime minister in front of a backdrop of a forest
Stefan Löfven's seven-year stint as Sweden's prime minister has been far from easy. Photo: Oli Scarff/AFP/TT

1. The 2014 budget crisis and December agreement

Less than three months after winning the election in September 2014, Löfven was met by his first government crisis.

After the Social Democrat-Green Party minority government’s proposed budget was rejected on December 3rd 2014 in favour of the right-wing opposition’s budget, Löfven said he would call a snap election to take place the following March to enable voters to “make a choice in the face of this new political landscape”, which for constitutional reasons couldn’t be formally called until December 29th 2014.

The crisis was caused by the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, who held a kingmaker position, choosing to vote in favour of the opposition’s budget. But two days before the snap election was due to be called, Löfven announced that the crisis had been averted, after talks between Löfven and the country’s four centre-right parties – known then as the Alliance.

The new deal was called the “December Agreement” (decemberöverenskommelsen in Swedish, or simply ) and its goal was to ensure that a minority government could govern Sweden. “With this agreement, the government will not be making any decision about an extra election, it is simply not of immediate interest,” said Löfven at the time.

The deal meant that the opposition would not vote for its own alternative budget in future votes if this threatened the elected government’s budget from getting passed. It was originally meant to end in 2022, but ended up being scrapped less than a year later in October 2015 by the Christian Democrats.

It was the first, but not the last time that Löfven had to navigate a government crisis during his time at the helm.

Stefan Löfven’s press conference in 2014 after the Sweden Democrats said they would topple the government. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

2. The 2015 refugee crisis

Autumn of 2015 offered another challenge for Löfven, which has arguably defined Swedish politics ever since.

In 2015, Sweden took in an unprecedented 163,000 asylum seekers – a shock for the country which was unprepared for so many – authorities had originally predicted as late as June 2015 that the number of asylum seekers applying would be lower than in 2014.

When questioned in 2016 by parliament on how the crisis was handled, Löfven described it as “a great challenge for Swedish society” adding that it was hard to judge the severity of the situation at the time. The government was criticised for waiting until November 2015 to introduce border controls, despite the fact that over 70 percent of refugees arriving to Sweden in 2015 arrived in September.

Löfven defended this decision, explaining that the police and the Migration Agency did not believe that border control requirements had been met before this point. He explained that EU rules on border controls had to be followed, saying that it would be difficult to explain to the EU why the government had introduced border controls before the police deemed it necessary.

Sweden also tightened asylum rules, including making temporary rather than permanent residence permits the norm, a move described at the time as temporary, but which later made it into Sweden’s Migration Act as the Social Democrats toughened its stance on immigration.

Asylum applications have dropped in recent years to below 22,000 in the year before the pandemic (in 2020 the number was below 13,000). Sweden’s stricter migration laws have affected all categories of immigrants, including parents, doctoral students and work permit holders.

Then-Green Party leader Åsa Romson in tears at a press conference where she and Stefan Löfven presented stricter migration laws in 2015. Photo: Marko Säävälä/TT

3. The long post-election negotiations in 2018

Sweden’s elections in September 2018 were too close to call, with neither one party nor one of the coalitions (centre-left: Social Democrats, Green Party, Left Party; centre-right: Moderate Party, Liberal Party, Centre Party, Christian Democrats) winning the 175 seats needed to form a majority government. Support rose for the far-right Sweden Democrats, albeit not as significantly as some polls had suggested it might.

This marked the beginning of a long, drawn-out negotiation period, with discussions continuing for 116 days until Löfven’s Social Democrat-Green coalition government – also known as the red-green coalition – was finally reelected in January 2019. With the coalition only holding 33 percent of seats in parliament, it’s been one of the weakest governments in Swedish history, reliant on support from other parties.

This support was a result of an agreement signed in January 2019, commonly referred to as the januariavtal or January Agreement. It provided backing from the Centre Party and the Liberals to the red-green coalition. In return, the government was bound by policy points set out in the January Agreement.

This agreement lasted until 2021, when the Left Party called a vote of no-confidence against Löfven in protest towards plans to introduce unregulated rent rates in newly built rental apartments (keep reading for more on that).

Centre Party leader Annie Lööf shaking hands with Stefan Löfven in 2019. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

4. The coronavirus pandemic

The outbreak of Covid-19 at the start of 2020 provided yet another challenge for Löfven, with widespread – and ongoing – discussions about Sweden’s unusual pandemic response.

Unlike other countries, Sweden’s politicians were not particularly involved in the early pandemic response, instead handing over authority to the Public Health Agency. This is protected by Swedish law, where ministerial rule of individual agencies and authorities is prohibited. Ministers are not allowed to interfere in day-to-day operations of government agencies, and must instead amend relevant laws if they wish to change the way agencies work.

Additionally, Sweden’s pandemic response, unlike in other countries, was not built on widespread testing, lockdowns or usage of face masks, choosing instead to rely on people’s personal responsibility to keep distance from each other and avoid meeting too many people. It later stepped up testing efforts and the government introduced a series of laws, including restricting opening hours for restaurants.

This has been widely discussed both within and outside Sweden, with the independent Coronavirus Commission due to release a report on this aspect of the pandemic response in February 2022. The commission’s report from October 2021 painted a damning portrait of other parts of the response, describing aspects as a “complete failure”. Löfven described this choice of words as “a bit of a stretch”.

Stefan Löfven giving a televised address to the nation in March 2020.
Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

5. The 2021 vote of no confidence

As previously mentioned briefly, Löfven lost a vote of no-confidence called by the Left Party in summer 2021, after a proposal to introduce unregulated rents in newly built properties. He was the first prime minister in modern Swedish history to lose such a vote.

Löfven remained prime minister during this time as part of a caretaker government, eventually being re-elected just weeks later after 173 MPs voted against him – two shy of the 175 MP limit required for him to not be re-elected.

After the re-election, Löfven continued as Sweden’s prime minister with an almost identical cabinet, despite the fact that the January Agreement – and therefore his support – was technically no longer in effect. In practice, parties have continued to follow this agreement, with the red-green coalition now tacitly supported by the Centre Party and the Left Party.

Just over a month later, on August 22nd 2021, Löfven announced his plans to resign as party leader and as prime minister at the party congress in November, after seven years as prime minister and ten as leader of the Social Democrats.

His expected successor in both roles is current Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson, who has been approved by the Social Democrats to take over as their leader. To become prime minister, she will have to approved by parliament. If successful, she will become Sweden’s first female prime minister.

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POLITICS IN SWEDEN

OPINION: Is Sweden complacent about social media influence of the radical-right?

With the think tank linked to the Sweden Democrats openly recruiting the next generation of far-right social media 'influencers', why is Sweden so complacent about moves to shift public opinion to the radical right, asks The Local's Nordic editor Richard Orange.

OPINION: Is Sweden complacent about social media influence of the radical-right?

The radical right in Sweden is at least open about what it’s trying to do.

The homepage of Oikos, the think tank set up by Mattias Karlsson, the former right-hand man of Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats, is currently recruiting the first 15 of “a new generation” of “conservative” online propagandists. 

The think tank – whose controlling foundation has been criticised for refusing to reveal the true origin of 5 million kronor in funding – this week launched its new Illustra Academy, which aims to train an army of young, far-right “creators” to help win over minds on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. 

Successful applicants, it promises, will get the chance “to meet leading actors in social media and digital political influencing”.

They will get “mentorship from established political influencers”, build “valuable contacts with influencers, digital opinion-makers, creatives, politicians and possible future employers”, and meet “businesses, political organisations, communications agencies and media actors”. 

This programme is being set up by Andreas Palmlöv, one of the many top Sweden Democrats who went to the US after Donald Trump was elected president to work for an increasingly radicalised Republican Party, serving as an intern for the former Speaker of Congress Kevin McCarthy.

After his return to Sweden, Palmlöv was photographed meeting Gregg Keller, a US lobbyist he says he met through the Leadership Institute, an organisation backed by a who’s who of US billionaire donors which has over the past ten years spent 8 million kronor training up young “conservatives” in Europe.

Karlsson, Åkesson’s former right-hand man, has even closer links to the US, holding at least one meeting with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, and attending the wedding of the pro-Trump US conservative media profile Candace Owens in 2019.   

As a British citizen, I’m perhaps overly sensitive about the influence of conservative, libertarian donors and their think tanks, and of the efforts to use social media to push public opinion towards the radical right. 

Vote Leave, which led the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, started its life at 55 Tufton Street, the townhouse near the UK Parliament where the country’s most powerful “dark money” think tanks are based, while Matthew Elliot, its chief executive, was a Tufton Street veteran. 

Since the UK left the EU, the ruling Conservative Party has been increasingly captured by these think tanks and their wealthy backers.   

Ministers, former ministers and Conservative MPs now happily speak alongside radical right figures at lavish conferences like the National Conservatism UK conference part-funded by Christian pro-Trump US foundations, or the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference part-funded by Paul Marshall and Christopher Chandler, the two billionaires who are the most open and prominent funders of attempts to shift the UK to the radical, libertarian right. 

Conservative MPs and former ministers have over the past two years been paid a total of £600,000 (8 million kronor) to appear on GB News, the Fox News clone jointly owned by Marshall and Chandler.

The Legatum Institute, Chandler’s own think tank, pretty much dictated the UK’s Brexit policy while Boris Johnson was prime minister, while during Liz Truss’s brief premiership, the Tufton Street think tanks supplied much of her team.

When her attempt to drive through their radical libertarian economic programme blew up spectacularly, she was forced to resign. But they haven’t given up, with Truss returning in February with the new Popular Conservatism group. 

I had always believed that the UK politics was immune to US levels of big donor influence, that the Conservative Party could never go the way of the Republican Party in the US, and it turns out I was wrong. 

So is that same naivety playing out in Sweden? 

The Oikos think tank has already started hosting international conservative conferences along the lines of ARC, with a conference at the Sundbyholms Slott castle outside Eskilstuna last year. 

When Social Democrat opposition leader Magdalena Andersson raised questions earlier this year about the funding of Henrik Jönsson, a popular YouTube debater, she was sharply criticised by commentators of both left and right for seeking to smear a critic without providing evidence

But in the US, there are billionaire-funded ‘educational’ YouTube channels like PragerU that follow a very similar format to Jönsson’s. Jönsson’s videos reliably follow the same talking points, questioning whether global warming is really causing extreme weather, spread disinformation about wind farms, call for Sweden’s public broadcasters to be abolished, and claim migrants have trashed the economy. 

And when a donor last year asked Gunnar Strömmer, now Sweden’s Justice Minister, how to give 350,000 kronor to the Moderates without having to identify himself under party financing laws, in part of a sting by TV4’s Kalla Fakta programme, Strömmer advised him to give it directly to right-wing “opinion-makers”, meaning, presumably, people like Jönsson. 

Despite the uproar, Jönsson has never explicitly denied receiving funding from outside organisations, only that such funding does not influence his output. 

“I am quite open about the fact that I willingly take money from all decent organisations and private individuals,” he told the Dagens ETC newspaper, while declining to give any further details. “But no one controls what I say,” he added. 

He has admitted that the website for his Energiupproret campaign, which blamed green policy and the shutdown of nuclear power stations for high power prices in the run-up to the 2022 election, was built by Näringslivets Mediaservice, a right wing social media outfit the precise funding of which was always unclear, although it was linked to Stiftelsen Svenskt Näringsliv, a foundation set up partly by the Confederation of Swedish Industry. 

The founders of Oikos’ new influencer education programme would probably argue that nothing is stopping the political left and centre from raising funds to train up young social media influencers in exactly the same way. 

Left-wing parties are not above taking donations. Approached by the same donor as part of the Kalla Fakta undercover report, representatives of the centre-left Social Democrats – as well as the Christian Democrats, Liberals, and Sweden Democrats on the right – also recommended ways around party finance laws.

But do we really want the UK or Sweden to follow the path the US has taken in recent decades, where a handful of billionaires with radical right opinions have aggressively pumped money into think tanks and media outfits and so succeeded in pushing one of the main parties towards previously fringe political opinions? 

It didn’t need to be this way.

When Sweden was developing its new party financing laws back in 2016, experts warned the then government must not to allow the identity of donors to be hidden behind foundations, the key method used by so-called dark money in the US, but the loophole was left open by the law.

It’s not just Oikos, which is funded by an opaque foundation, Insamlingsstiftelsen för Svensk Konservatism (The Fundraising Foundation for Swedish Conservatism), which uses this loophole. 

When caught in the sting by the Kalla Fakta programme, a Social Democrat also suggested that the donor set up a foundation to hide their identity. 

It may be that money from US billionaires, big companies, or indeed from other states, is not yet being spent in Sweden in a way that can alter the political landscape, but because neither think tanks nor influencers need to give much information about who funds them, it’s impossible to know. 

In the UK, the danger may soon be averted. No one seems to take the new outfit fronted by Liz Truss too seriously, and the general election later this year should offer the chance to clean up the country’s politics.  

Nonetheless, I feel like I’ve come very close to losing my original homeland to the kind of political developments seen in the US. I don’t want to lose my adopted country too.

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