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POLITICS IN SWEDEN

Politics in Sweden: What are Jimmie Åkesson’s plans for the future?

Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson's absence from one of the main events in the political calendar has prompted pundits to wonder what his plans are after 18 years at the helm of the party.

Published: 23 May 2023 10:10 CEST
Politics in Sweden: What are Jimmie Åkesson's plans for the future?
Sweden Democrat party leader Jimmie Åkesson. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

Åkesson will not speak at Almedalen Week – Sweden’s annual political festival – this year, the party announced last week.

The far-right leader told the Sweden Democrats’ communications channel Riks that he would take a longer summer holiday instead, as many Swedes do. It’s common in Sweden to take at least four weeks off in June-August, and even the world of politics tends to slow down.

That is, however, with the exception of Almedalen Week, the main event of the yearly political calendar. Every day, one or two of the party leaders delivers a keynote speech, and it is unusual for them to miss out on this opportunity to present their policies at prime time.

Unusual, but not unheard of.

Former Social Democrat leader and prime minister Stefan Löfven cancelled his attendance at the festival in 2019 and 2021 – in 2021 to deal with a government crisis – and so did former Moderate leader and prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in 2007.

But after 18 years as leader of the Sweden Democrats, Åkesson’s absence raises questions about his plans for the future.

The news comes after he was unusually quiet following the September election, suddenly reappeared with a flurry of interviews in the Swedish newspapers in spring, only to announce he’s taking a long summer holiday.

Åkesson’s position is probably the most secure of any party leader. He led the Sweden Democrats from obscurity on the neo-Nazi fringe to becoming the country’s second largest party in just a couple of decades. If he wants to stay on, he’s unthreatened.

But does he?

At Almedalen Week, the Sweden Democrats will instead be represented by their new parliamentary group leader Linda Lindberg, to help her develop her public profile, said Åkesson.

Lindberg is currently the chair of the party’s women’s branch and could help boost its popularity among women – or at least improve its reputation as an all-boys club.

But she is new and unknown in a party with a few strong names. Often mentioned in leadership discussions are Mattias Karlsson, Henrik Vinge, Oscar Sjöstedt and Jessica Stegrud.

Karlsson is often described as the brain behind the party’s ideology and has previously deputised for Åkesson, but he has also said he doesn’t enjoy having such a senior role.

Vinge is the party’s former group leader in parliament, former press spokesperson and current deputy party leader, but he has been involved in a conflict with another party member.

Sjöstedt is the party’s spokesperson on economic issues, but is also known for featuring in a video in which he retold anti-Semitic jokes – an image the party is trying to ditch.

Stegrud, a former member of the European Parliament and current member of the Swedish parliament, joined Åkesson for his campaign tour ahead of the 2022 election. But is she well known enough among the public to take over the helm of the party?

The point may be moot, anyway. As broadcaster TV4’s political reporter points out in an article, Åkesson is practically a newbie compared to one of the Christian Democrats’ former party leaders, Alf Svensson, who held his position for more than 30 years.

And Åkesson will not want to leave unless he’s sure his shoes can be filled.

In other news

Thirteen out of 24 government ministers identify as feminists, according to a survey by Swedish public radio. The new right-wing government made headlines when it scrapped the former centre-left government’s “feminist foreign policy” when it assumed office after the 2022 election.

“Of course [I’m a feminist]. In the sense that girls and women should have the same rights and opportunities as boys and men. And that’s not the case today,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the radio.

Turkey is not ready to let Sweden into Nato, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last week told CNN. Turkey is set to hold a new round of elections on May 28th, and Sweden’s Kristersson said he didn’t expect much to happen before then. He added that his hope was still that Sweden would become a member of Nato before the summit in Lithuania in mid-July, but conceded that time was “shrinking”. 

Sweden has appointed a new EU ambassador to replace Lars Danielsson, who will retire this summer after six years in the role.

Mikaela Kumlin Granit, who is currently Sweden’s ambassador to the UK, will take over as EU ambassador in August.

Politics in Sweden is a weekly column looking at the big talking points and issues in Swedish politics. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive an email alert when the column is published. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.

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POLITICS IN SWEDEN

Did Sweden’s PM play politics in his speech to the nation?

After what was arguably Sweden's worst ever week of gang violence, the country's Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, delivered a solemn address to the nation. But how much was he seeking to unite and how much playing party politics?

Published: 2 October 2023 16:37 CEST
Did Sweden's PM play politics in his speech to the nation?

It is a rare event for a Swedish Prime Minister to make a televised speech to the nation. 

Kristersson’s Social Democrat predecessor Magdalena Andersson delivered one in the tense days after Russia invaded Ukraine. Stefan Löfven made two during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Aside from those, it has only been the one Göran Persson delivered after the assassination of Sweden’s foreign minister, Anne Lindh, and the one Carl Bildt delivered as the Laser Man serial kiler was shooting random immigrants across the country. 

The idea of such a speech is for the Prime Minister to unite the Swedish people, to provide stability, calm and a sense of direction at a time of crisis. 

Kristersson started his speech last Thursday fully in this tradition, with a simple, grave statement: “It is a difficult time for Sweden.” 

But after hard-hitting descriptions of the worst of the week’s killings, be began to point the blame, and it wasn’t he or his government who were at fault.  

“In fact, many of us saw it coming, and gave warning,” he said. “Serious organised crime has been emerging for more than a decade. Over a ten-year period, gun violence has increased threefold. Political naivety and cluelessness have brought us to this point. Irresponsible immigration policy and failed integration have brought us to this point.” 

The message was clear. The fault lay with the “political naivity” of the previous two Social Democrat-Green coalition governments, and just possibly also with the two Moderate Party-led right-wing alliance governments that preceded them. 

If only they had listened to the calls for tighter immigration coming at that time (then only really from the far-right Sweden Democrats), Sweden would not be in this situation. 

Tomas Ramberg, political commentator for the liberal-left Dagens Nyheter newspaper, complained that this was “not a speech to rally the country across political divides.” 

“Addresses to the nation are rare in Swedish politics. They have been seen as a way to unify the country,” he wrote. “Ulf Kristersson used it to convince people that the government is in control of the situation. But also to try to gather greater support for the government.” 

But even many commentators on the right criticised how politicised the speech was. 

“Let’s just say this: I believe citizens could have done with a prime minister’s speech, not the closing statement of a party leader debate in Agenda,” complained Peter Wennblad,  assistant opinion editor of the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper and a leading right-wing opinion former. 

“I believe Ulf Kristersson would have benefited from holding his speech as a Prime Minister and not as a Moderate,” wrote Moa Berglöf, the former speechwriter for the previous Moderate Party prime minister, Fredrik Reinfeldt, on X. 

Sweden’s prime minister is not alone in playing politics with gang crime, of course. 

The Social Democrats held a press conference on Wednesday in which the party accused the government of having done nothing to combat gang crime.  

“In the election campaign, the government parties promised a new crackdown on the gangs but we’ve seen none of that,” the party wrote in its press release. “Deadline after deadline has passed with no proposals for new laws.” 

Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats, called for the government to bring in the military, something Kristersson then promised to do in his speech.

For this, you can hardly blame them. In the election campaign Kristersson, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch and Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson all criticised the government relentlessly for failing to stop gang violence. 

In June 2022, the Moderates and Christian Democrats even backed a no-confidence vote launched by the Sweden Democrats to depose the then justice minister, Morgan Johansson, with Åkesson writing on X, that the Social Democrats’ soft “orange squash and sticky bun policies” towards criminals had helped turn Sweden into “a gangsterland”. 

“The only people who are pleased with the government’s work are the criminals, those who murder, harm and threaten,” Kristersson wrote. 

It would naive to expect the Social Democrats to forfeit the chance to get their own back for the ruthless way in which the three right-wing parties exploited the issue.

Similarly, now Kristersson has the near impossible task of combatting gang crime, it is hardly surprising that he should want to remind the public again and again that the shootings and explosions started long before he took power.  

Ideally, the government and opposition would unite, create a cross-party commission, and work together to reduce gang crime, depoliticising the issue and opening the way for evidence-based policies that have a better chance of working. 

Might it happen? One day perhaps. But certainly not yet.

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