Government crisis in Sweden strengthens the far right
A government crisis in Sweden that began earlier this year with the then Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s temporary resignation has intensified in recent weeks.
Behind the Riksdag’s horse trade and positions, which led to the new Social Democratic leader Magdelena Andersson twice being elected new prime minister within a week, the crisis has given a sharp shift to the right in official politics. This development is a product of the Swedish ruling elite’s murderous “herd immunity” pandemic policy, which served as a model for the most malicious anti-worker governments around the world to allow the deadly virus to flourish.
The latest phase of the crisis began when Löfven announced his resignation as Prime Minister and Social Democratic leader and claimed that he wanted to give his successor time to build up their authority ahead of the parliamentary elections in September. Andersson, who was Minister of Finance under Löfven, was elected in early November to lead the Social Democrats. The party has led the Swedish government since 2014 in coalition with the Green Party.
When Andersson secured the Riksdag’s support for becoming Prime Minister on 24 November, she was supported only by the Social Democrats and the Greens, which gave her only 117 votes in parliament with 349 seats. The Center and Left parties, which have helped the Social Democratic / Green coalition to secure a majority in recent years, abstained. The remaining parties – the Liberals, the Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Sweden Democrats – voted against Andersson.
The parliamentary tradition says that a prime minister does not require a majority to be elected. They just need to make sure that a majority of the deputies do not vote against them. The votes of the four right-wing parties amounted to 174, a mandate shy of the majority required to block Andersson’s elections.
Later the same day, the Riksdag debated two budget proposals for 2022, one prepared by the Social Democrats and another by the right-wing Moderates and the Christian Democrats and the far-right Sweden Democrats. Andersson’s budget, backed by the Social Democrats, the Green Party and the Left Party, was cut down before the Riksdag adopted the Moderate-led proposal after the Center Party voted with the other right-wing parties. It was the first time ever that a compiled budget with the involvement of the Sweden Democrats was adopted. The Greens, who claimed to be opposed to implementing a budget partly drawn up by the fascist party, withdrew from the government, forcing Andersson to resign just hours after being elected prime minister.
Andersson insisted that she stand for re-election as Prime Minister at the head of a minority government consisting only of the Social Democrats. She promised to introduce the budget for 2022 prepared by the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats. On the basis of this, she secured re-election on November 29, where the Greens, the center and the left parties abstained to prevent a parliamentary majority against Andersson from emerging.
The endless maneuvering is only the latest expression of the steady march of official politics to the right. The process has been dramatically accelerated by the covid-19 pandemic and the ruling reaction of the ruling class, but it has been going on for decades, mainly thanks to the joint efforts of the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the trade unions to block the working class from intervening independently in political affairs.
The primary political responsibility lies with the former Stalinist Left Party, which has invoked the threat from the far right to justify increased support for right-wing Social Democrat governments. It has played a crucial role in supporting every Social Democratic government over the past three decades, helping to dismantle the “social model” and turn Sweden into a paradise for private investors. World Socialist Website wrote about the Left Party in June. It supported the Social Democrats when they carried out thorough privatizations, deregulation of companies, cleansing of workers’ rights and attacks on social programs. This is the product of the Left Party’s acceptance of Sweden’s official political approach, which identifies the establishment parties as two opposing blocs: The Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party; and the right-wing ‘Alliance’, which consists of the Moderates, the Center Party, the Liberals and the Christian Democrats. “
Since the Social Democrats returned to power in 2014 after eight years of Moderate-led rule, they and their “left” partners have facilitated the steady growth of the Sweden Democrats’ political influence.
In the name of stopping the Sweden Democrats’ accession to power, the Social Democratic / Green Minority Coalition concluded an agreement with the Alliance parties in 2014 to ensure that Löfven could govern an entire parliamentary term as long as he accepted the Alliance’s budget framework. After the Sweden Democrats won additional ground in the 2018 election, the Social Democrats moved even further to the right and reached a formal agreement with the Center Party and the Liberals to keep Löfven in power. The Left Party constantly continued to back the Social Democratic government.
Even now, when it is clear to everyone that the “left” parties’ claims to block the growth of the far right have had the opposite effect, the Left Party continues to insist on supporting the Social Democrats. With its decision to abstain in the vote on Andersson’s re-election, it has allowed a Social Democratic government to come to power that promises to implement a budget with the support of the Sweden Democrats.
The Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party are paving the way for the fascists to enter government after the elections in September 2022. The budget just adopted contains a number of measures against immigrants and the law and order that they intend to implement. These include salary increases for police officers, additional funds for surveillance technology, a commitment to carry out “more deportations and asylum refusals” and a promise to “fight illegal immigration as well as those living illegally in Sweden.”
More than any other country, Sweden was associated in the early stages of the pandemic with a policy of “herd immunity”, ie the government’s refusal to take any serious public health measures because the virus flourished. State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell became the poster boy for right-wing extremists around the world, including Donald Trump in the US and Boris Johnson in the UK, who wanted to emulate Sweden’s brutal “profits before life” agenda. Tegnell advised Johnson just weeks before the British Prime Minister made his infamous “No more fucking locks! Let the bodies pile up in the thousands!” declaration.
Sweden’s policy included ordering nursing homes not to send people over the age of 80 to hospitals and letting them die if they became infected. Covid-19 infections and death rates were much higher in immigrant communities and other low-income communities. To date, with a population of just over 10 million, Sweden has registered more than 1.2 million infections and 15,100 deaths.
The implementation of such a ruthless policy requires the encouragement of the most reactionary political forces. When governments around the world essentially adopted Sweden’s strategy for “flock immunity” by reopening their economies after temporary shutdowns in early 2020, their ruling classes relied on right-wing extremist protesters to lead the abolition of public health restrictions. In the United States, Trump and his fascist supporters mobilized violent anti-lockdown demonstrations and threatened to assassinate politicians linked to covid-19 actions, such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. In Germany, the political establishment and the media built up the protests of “Lateral Thinkers” led by right-wing extremists and outright fascists. In August 2020, protesters climbed the stairs to the Riksdag building to wave the old flag of the German Empire.
The threat of a Swedish government coming to power with the support of a right-wing extremist party comes as bourgeois democracy across Europe enters an ever deeper crisis. In France, Germany and Spain, the army, security forces and police are full of fascist terrorist networks planning coups and assassinations of political opponents. Two right-wing extremist candidates, National Rallys Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are highlighted in the media as the main challengers in next spring’s French presidential election to the hated Emmanuel Macron. The Austrian government collapsed last month following allegations of corruption and crime by former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and his allies.
This development underlines the importance of workers in Sweden uniting with their classmates and sisters throughout Europe and internationally in the fight against the capitalist profit system. This task requires the construction of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.