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SWEDEN ELECTS

ANALYSIS: What we learned from the Christmas speeches of Sweden’s political leaders

In our weekly Sweden Elects newsletter, The Local's editor Emma Löfgren explains the key events to keep an eye on in Swedish politics this week.

Published: 27 December 2022 07:45 CET
ANALYSIS: What we learned from the Christmas speeches of Sweden's political leaders
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in front of his Christmas tree. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Hej,

God fortsättning (“happy continuation“) as we say in Sweden after major holidays. I hope you’re enjoying the last week of 2022 – what a year.

‘Tis also the season of Christmas speeches.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson gave his first Christmas speech since his Moderate-led right-wing coalition government won the election.

It wasn’t exactly festive.

Kristersson predicted tough years ahead for Sweden. He spoke of “three parallel crises”: gang crime and shootings, the global security crisis sparked by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and the energy and financial crisis.

He mentioned the government’s responsibility, but also stressed people’s personal responsibility to weather financial storms, prevent young people falling into crime through active parenting or valuable friendships, and defend Sweden by for example signing up for military service.

In fact, public radio broadcaster SR’s political expert Fredrik Furtenbach counted that the word ansvar (“responsibility”) made at least 30 appearances in the 2,795-word speech (I counted 31 in the written text).

Olle Lönnaeus, a political reporter for the independent-liberal newspaper Sydsvenskan, dryly noted that Kristersson blamed most of the problems on the Social Democrats and pointed out that his support is low despite the fact that governments usually get a poll boost from times of crises.

That said, Kristersson has been in power for roughly two months so there’s still time for his support to go up or down. Sweden will hold its next general election in 2026. The financial downturn is expected to last throughout his premiership. How his government handles it will quite possibly be the key factor that defines his time as prime minister.

Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson by contrast spoke in her Christmas speech of people’s need to find light in dark times, and that such light exists when we stand up for what’s right and help each other out – although she, too, also focused a lot on the various crises.

She attacked Kristersson on the election pledges his government has already broken (their energy support failed to meet its deadline, plans to pause a requirement to pay back interest on mortgages were put on hold), clearly hoping that this is what will stick in the voters’ minds.

That said, as Aftonbladet’s political writer Lena Mellin pointed out, Andersson has “the world’s easiest job” as opposition leader in tumultous financial times, even though the crisis wasn’t caused by the government. “She only has to say ‘electricity price’ and support goes down for the government’s three parties as well as for their Sweden Democrat allies.”

King Carl XVI Gustaf, too, gave his annual Christmas speech – his 50th – on Sunday. His role is non-political, so his speech was naturally of a slightly different character to the ones by Kristersson and Andersson.

The start of the speech looked back at some of his visits to Ukraine, including to Gammalsvenskby in 2008 – a village hit hard by Russia’s invasion. Then, he spoke about the year ahead – when he will have been King of Sweden for 50 years, and when 500 years will have passed since King Gustav Vasa founded the modern nation state of Sweden.

Finally, he spoke of gratitude to those who came before us and our generation’s responsibility to preserve what they built. He didn’t say so explicitly, but there was a hint of environmentalism there: “The fields we harvest. The forests we build our houses out of. The trees we get our Christmas apples from. For generations, people have planted and sown, looked after forest and land – and passed them on for us to manage.”

Owe Nilsson, a well-known political reporter at TT, Sweden’s main news agency, has left his job after 38 years, following a dispute with his employer over a tweet in which he criticised the government for not extending a funding scheme to an anti-Semitism organisation.

His TT bosses thought he was voicing too much of a political opinion in the tweet and tried to reassign him to subediting duties. It ended with Nilsson himself quitting, which sparked surprised reactions from high-ranking politicians, both left and right-wing. Nilsson had been around for so long he had almost become part of the parliamentary furniture.

Who did Swedish newspapers write about the most in the past year? The answer is Vladimir Putin, according to research by Retriever and TT. Former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson takes the second spot followed by Ulf Kristersson, who succeeded her in September.

This year’s “rockets”, i.e. those who climbed the rankings the fastest, are Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Sir Väs, the king cobra who escaped (and then returned to) his enclosure at a Stockholm zoo.

A new inquiry into strengthening security on digital ID services in Sweden will also look at improving access for foreigners temporarily working and studying in Sweden, the minister responsible has told The Local.

Sweden’s new government has halted the former government’s plans to build faster train connections between Gothenburg and Borås and Lund and Hässleholm, a move local politicians called “a disaster”.

Sweden Elects is a weekly column by Editor Emma Löfgren looking at the big talking points and issues after the Swedish election. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive the column as a newsletter in their email inbox each week. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.

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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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