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Moderate opposition leader Anna Kinberg Batra resigns

Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of Sweden's main opposition party, has said she will step down, with just over one year to go to the general election.

Published: 25 August 2017 09:39 CEST
Updated: 25 August 2017 11:23 CEST
Moderate opposition leader Anna Kinberg Batra resigns
Anna Kinberg Batra at a press conference on Friday. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Kinberg Batra announced her resignation as head of the centre-right Moderates at a morning press conference, saying she had asked the nominating committee to call to an extraordinary meeting to elect a new leader.

The 47-year-old had faced heavy criticism in the past few months with the party plummeting in the polls. Heavy voices within the party, including 11 regional party districts and the Moderate youth wing, had called for her resignation ahead of her announcement on Friday, just months after she survived a previous push. 

She told the press conference it was necessary for her to step aside so that the party could instead focus on issues and on winning back support from the voters in Sweden's general elections in September 2018.

“That is not possible right now. There are too many Moderates doing what can only be described as self-harm,” she said. “I don't think the voters are very impressed.”

ANALYSIS: Where did it all go wrong for Anna Kinberg Batra?

The criticism began after she announced in January that she would be prepared to enter into talks with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, in an attempt to put pressure on the Swedish government. The move backfired, resulting in dwindling voter support, and questions being raised about what the party stands for.

“It was the right decision. I regret nothing. It is easy being wise in hindsight,” said Kinberg Batra.

“Tackling difficult issues also means taking a few knocks. But I definitely do not regret my choices.”

“It is not obvious that maintaining what political scientists often call the cordon sanitaire around SD would have worked any better for the Moderates,” said political scientist Nicholas Aylott of Södertörn University, looking at the various paths the Moderate leader could have taken in an analysis piece for The Local.

Many had pegged Kinberg Batra to become Sweden's first female prime minister, but she had a tough task taking over from her popular predecessor Fredrik Reinfeldt, who stepped down with high approval ratings despite losing the 2014 election. 

A poll this week suggested only six percent of voters backed her to be the next prime minister, compared to current PM Stefan Löfven's 24 percent.

“I am proud of having been trusted to be party leader and to become the Moderates' first female party leader. I hope that my daughter will live to see Sweden getting its first female prime minister,” said Kinberg Batra.

The other three leaders of Sweden's centre-right opposition, known as the Alliance (Moderates, Centre Party, Liberals, Christian Democrats), were quick to offer their support to Kinberg Batra after her resignation speech.

“I have really appreciated working with Anna,” wrote Centre Party leader Annie Lööf, while Liberal leader Jan Björklund hit out at “coup makers” within the Moderate party and urged it to “close the door to SD”.

Kinberg Batra will remain leader until the party elects her replacement.

SWEDEN DEMOCRATS

REVEALED: Sweden Democrats’ secret social media ‘troll factory’

A Swedish reporter went undercover for a whole year to confirm the existence of a far-right troll factory, run by the Sweden Democrats to spread content of benefit to the party and degrade its political opponents.

Published: 7 May 2024 15:34 CEST
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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