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Who will be Sweden’s next prime minister? Rivals make their final pitch

UPDATED: Sweden's search for a new government – four months after the election – is approaching the finishing line. But does that mean a new prime minister or a snap election?

Published: 10 January 2019 08:16 CET
Updated: 10 January 2019 12:15 CET
Who will be Sweden's next prime minister? Rivals make their final pitch
The speaker of parliament, Andreas Norlén. Photo: Magnus Hjalmarson Neideman/SvD/TT

Incumbent prime minister Stefan Löfven of the centre-left Social Democrats and Ulf Kristersson of the conservative Moderates presented their final reports to the speaker of parliament today, updating him on their progress in government negotiations.

Speaker Andreas Norlén first met Löfven at 10am in his office in parliament, before speaking to Kristersson half an hour later, following weeks of secret talks between party leaders.

Löfven was reticent in a press conference following his meeting, saying: “Discussions are still ongoing.”

He described the talks as “constructive” and said that the focus was on ensuring Sweden had “a viable government as soon as possible”. But the Social Democrat leader said he could not give any comment on how likely it was that he would be the one to form that government.

Kristersson's comments were similar. 

“I can actually only confirm that over the weekend intensive discussions have taken place between the parties of the Alliance, in a good atmosphere. And they are continuing,” the Moderate leader said, referring to the Christian Democrats, Centre and Liberal parties, which together with Kristersson's party make up the Alliance.

The Centre and Liberal parties voted against a government led by Kristersson in an earlier vote, and the two have ended up in a king-maker role since the September 9th election left the country divided. It is likely that both Löfven and Kristersson have focussed on trying to attract their support in recent weeks.

To achieve this, Löfven will have had to move right on issues such as workers' rights and market liberalism, without losing the votes of the Left Party to his left. Kristersson will have had to promise his allies that his government would not be dependent on the Sweden Democrats – without losing the support of the Sweden Democrats.


Löfven is the leader of the biggest centre-left party, and Kristersson of the biggest centre-right party. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

Norlén has already named January 16th as the date when the next prime ministerial candidate will face a parliamentary vote. Two such votes have already been held, with both Löfven and Kristersson failing to gain enough support from parliament.

By far the most likely scenario is that one of these two would be proposed for the role a second time. Norlén is expected to name his candidate on Monday.

A prime ministerial candidate does not need a majority of parliament to vote in their favour in order to be accepted, but if a majority vote against, the proposal will fail. This system, called 'negative parliamentarism', allows minority governments to rule thanks to abstentions or 'passive support'.

If this third vote is unsuccessful, a fourth vote would happen on January 23rd, Norlén has said. If one of these votes is successful, the new prime minister will officially take on the role and name their cabinet within a matter of days.

But if neither vote is successful, Sweden will need to hold a second election, which must then happen no more than three months after the fourth and final vote. Swedish elections are always held on Sundays, so the latest date this could happen would be April 21st.

This means that Sweden is in wholly untested waters. Previously, parliament has always accepted the first proposed prime minister.

To catch up with everything that has happened since the election, The Local's timeline offers a handy overview. And if you have any questions about the process, please log in to comment below.

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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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