As luck would have it, Andersson, or “Magda” as she’s known in Social Democrat circles, published something approaching a manifesto in the run-up to the summer, and if it’s any guide to her thinking, she might be considerably further to the left than her cautious handling of Sweden’s accounts as finance minister would suggest. 

So what is Magdalena Andersson’s ‘manifesto’? 

It’s less a manifesto than a position paper, and comes with the catchy title, Fördelningspolitik för jämlikhet och rättvisa, which translates as something like “Redistributive policy for equality and justice”. 

It was put together by a working group headed by Andersson, but which also included Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, the mayor of Malmö; Fredrik Olovsson, former head of the Swedish parliament’s finance committee and a possibility to replace Andersson as finance minister; Bodil Hansson, the mayor of Sundsvall; Philip Botström, leader of the Social Democratic youth party; and Ola Pettersson, chief economist of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. 

The paper is, on the face of it, an analysis of what has happened to make Sweden the country in the OECD where inequality has increased the fastest since 1980, together with suggestions for policies to reverse the trend. 

But it also includes a critique of the whole project of neoliberalism launched by US President Ronald Reagan and the UK’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and then embraced enthusiastically by the Moderate party-led governments of Carl Bildt and Fredrik Reinfeldt (and even arguably by that of the Göran Persson, the Social Democrat PM who gave Andersson her first break). 

In particular, the paper rails against the introduction of market forces and private interests into healthcare, education and other welfare services, and comes close to calling for this to be completely reversed. 

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How seriously should it be taken? 

It is unclear whether at the time it was written, any of the authors had the slightest suspicion that Stefan Löfven would step down as prime minister before next year’s election. 

Mari Huupponen, an investigator with the Kommunal union, who has analysed some of the same topics around profit-making in welfare, warned The Local not to see the document as a set of serious policy proposals, let alone as Andersson’s political programme. 

“It’s not as if it’s an official document that the party will now pursue. It’s just like a policy paper that one group working inside of the party has produced. I don’t think that this is a big picture of what the dreams of Magdalena Andersson look like.”

But it does at least gives an idea as to the sort of things she is thinking. 

What does the report say about Neoliberalism? 

That it has failed completely and should be abandoned.

A chapter on “the failure of Neoliberalism” argues that tax cuts for the rich have not “trickled down” but have stayed with the rich, that cutting taxes on income did not make people work harder or reduce unemployment, and that introducing market forces to the welfare system has not made them more efficient. 

Instead, letting the private sector supply health, welfare and education has led to corruption, the siphoning off of public money to private actors, and services that were shown up during the pandemic as weakened and badly coordinated. 

“It has today become clear that bringing competition into healthcare, education and elderly care, which people cannot choose not to have because they have a fundamental need for it, does not function like a traditional market where bad alternatives are competed out,” the report says. 

“Lobbying for actors seeking to profit from welfare has risen considerably, which might explain the big discrepancy between the majority of parliamentary parties’ positive position towards profits from welfare, and citizens’ opposition to the same thing.”

“It is time,” the paper concludes, “to bring an end to the neoliberal era characterised by the withdrawal of the political sphere in favour of market forces”.

What does the report say about the causes of inequality? 

Rather than being the result of falling union membership, or global competition for highly skilled workers, the report argues that growing inequality in Sweden has been primarily the result of deliberate policy decisions taken by the centre-right governments of Carl Bildt and Fredrik Reinfeldt (who led Sweden from 1991-1994 and 2006-2014, respectively).

“To a large extent, growing inequality is due to political decisions – or the lack of political decisions – which have made it possible for the top to pull away, while the bottom has fallen behind,” it says. 

“Although global trends have had an effect on income distribution, research indicates that policies play a crucial role, and that domestic policies can both fuel and counteract widening income gaps.” 

The policies that have increased inequality in Sweden include scrapping the country’s old förmögenhetsskatt or “wealth tax”, scrapping tax on inheritance or gifts, changing Sweden’s old property tax to a municipal change, and bringing in the investeringssparkonto, or individual savings account, which shields shares, bonds, and investment funds from capital gains tax. 

What about immigration? 

Given that immigration is likely to once again become an important top in the coming election campaign, surprisingly little is known about Andersson’s position. If this paper is any guide, and as Huupponen warned we should not automatically assume that it is, she will push for a more restrictive immigration policy. 

Since the 1970s, the paper declares, “large groups have come from countries outside Europe, with a weak tradition of education, which impacts on the possibilities of integration in a knowledge economy like Sweden”. 

As a result, the paper declares, “immigration to Sweden needs, to a greater extent, to be adjusted to the practical possibility to integrate people”. 

When it comes to labour immigration, the paper calls for an even more restrictive approach, blaming the Reinfeldt government for liberalising labour immigration laws in 2007 so that employers did not need to show that they could not find people with the necessary skills in Sweden. 

Only about half of the 21,000 people who received work permits in 2019 were highly skilled workers, with the rest in jobs seen as low-qualified such as carpenters, cooks, care assistants, caretakers, and berry pickers. 

“This is a poor fit with the ambition to get low-skilled unemployed people in Sweden into jobs,” the report argues. 

Would an Andersson government kick the private sector out of education, health and welfare?

The paper stops short of calling for an end to private sector involvement in health, education and welfare, but it suggests a long list of measures that will make it much less profitable for the companies involved, and in some cases ban profits altogether. 

In a section called Stoppa marknadskrafterna i välfärden, or “Stop the market forces in welfare”, it calls for a ban on profit-making for companies operating in primary healthcare and elderly care within the Lagen om Valfrihet (LOV), or “Freedom of Choice System Act”, brought in by the Reinfeldt government in 2008. 

This law allows Sweden’s regions or municipalities, if they wish, to let individuals choose between private actors who provide a certain service, instead of the municipality or region itself tendering for contractors to provide the services through public procurement. With primary healthcare, this is compulsory for municipalities. 

The paper proposed that “profit-orientated actors should only be allowed within the bounds of public procurement”, and that municipalities and regions should be able to decide whether to allow private actors to offer primary care, just as they can with elderly care. 

When it comes to profits in the education centre, the paper stops short of calling for profit-making to be stopped entirely. 

The paper proposes abolishing the right of operators of free schools to establish schools wherever they want to, instead giving municipal education authorities the right to allow or turn down applications depending on need. 

It also proposes ending the system where free schools can set up their own queue system, with applications to all schools taking place through a central municipality system, making it harder for free school operators to choose which students they have. 

Higher taxes for the well-off, particularly on investments, property and high incomes 

The report calls for dramatic reductions in the value of shares that can be shielded from capital gains tax in an individual savings account, or ISK, and will also bring in a “millionaire tax”, for those with the highest level of wealth (excluding property). 

Tougher to get work permits

Although there are no concrete proposals in the paper, it is clear that the party wants to limit labour immigration to jobs Sweden cannot fill with its existing workforce. This could make it tougher for, say, people who want to come to Sweden to work in restaurants or as care assistants. 

Harder to be freelance or get short-term work 

The paper wants long-term, full-time employment to be the norm in Sweden, and proposes greater scrutiny of those registered as self-employed who carry out most of their work for a single employer. It also stresses that “short-term employment contracts” should not be misused, meaning that the fields, such as academia or the media, where people are often employed on rotating short-term contracts because their employers do not want to take on the commitment involved in full-time employment, may be harder to get. 

End of asylum seekers’ right to choose where they live 

The paper proposes abolishing the asylum seekers’ right to arrange their own accomodation in the municipality of their choice and still be able to receive benefits. The so-called EBO law has already been limited by the Social Democrats to prevent asylum seekers becoming too concentrated in areas of Sweden’s big cities with large existing immigrant populations. 

Better access to vocational education for the unemployed 

The paper proposes giving the Swedish Employment Service, or Arbetsförmedlingen, greater resources and responsibilities for sending underqualified workers for additional training, adult education, or even university degrees, to help counter the skills shortage that leave some in long-term unemployment. The paper also proposes increasing the resources available for adult education. 

Will any of this actually happen? 

Huupponen at Kommunal doubts it.

“The Social Democrats have historically been harsh in rhetoric when it comes to profit-making in welfare, but they have rarely demanded changes to policy. It’s more like big words, and big rhetoric.” 

The test, she says, will come at the party conference in November where not only is Andersson likely to be chosen as party leader, but the subject of private actors in education, health and welfare will be hotly debated. 

Daniel Suhonen, the unofficial ideologist for the Social Democrats’ left faction, argued in the ETC newspaper at the start of this month that Andersson’s track record of compromise and moderation made it unlikely that any of the more dramatic proposals would make it into government policy. 

“It sounds radical to declare the Death of Neoliberalism, but she isn’t prepared to face the conflict on any real issues. There will be a lot of rhetoric but no action (mycket retorik, men ingen verkstad).”

Time will tell.