The Nordic left is back in the lead
THERE IS happy days for the nordic left. For the first time since 2001, they run all four major Nordic countries – all five, including small Iceland. Four of the five leaders are women: Magdalena Andersson, Social Democrat, became Sweden’s first female prime minister in November. The Nordic model envied by foreign leftists (but not always understood) has a moment.
So one could have expected a happy mood among the members of Byggnads, a construction trade union, which met at a The community House (community house) in Stockholm in December. Instead, they were angry. The LO, The Swedish Trade Union Confederation, had just reached an agreement with the employers’ association and the government that would reform labor law to make it easier to dismiss workers. In exchange, the state will pay more to retrain them.
“This is only for the benefit of business owners,” says Felix Gravel, who installs insulation. He fears that the proposed law will allow companies to bully their employees. Byggnads opposes the reforms and Gravel questions his loyalty to the Social Democrats: “Do they stand up for me? I’m just a dirty worker. ”
Nordic Social Democrats win elections, but they lack their old clear vision of the future. After decades of liberalization, welfare states are less generous and inequality has increased. Fear of immigration and crime has strengthened the populists and forced center-left parties to go right on these issues, especially immigration. At the same time, young awake city dwellers are turning to more radical left-wing parties.
Denmark’s Social Democrats have shifted most to immigration. In 2019, Mette Frederiksen became prime minister and promised asylum rules even stricter than the previous center-right government. She implements “ghetto laws” to break up neighborhoods where high immigration levels and crime coincide. It sucks the air out of the populist Danish People’s Party: its votes were halved in the 2019 election.
Frederiksen has also introduced popular left-wing politics as a plan to triple the construction of social housing. But while her anti-immigrant turn has won over people who worry about foreigners, it has lost some urban progressives. In the local elections in November, the Social Democrats’ share of the vote in Copenhagen fell by ten points; the red-green alliance won ground. Pelle Dragsted, formerly Rödgrön MP, say young people think that the Social Democrats are nasty.
In Sweden, Andersson copies some of Frederiksen’s features. Sweden received huge numbers of refugees during the migration crisis in 2015-16. Gang wars, often involving immigrants, have increased the number of gun killings, although it is still low. After taking over from Stefan Lofven, the former Social Democratic prime minister, she promised to deport more immigrant criminals. It turned out later that a company she hired had hired an illegal immigrant to clean her house.
It may be too late to win back many working class voters. The Sweden Democrats, which started as a neo-Nazi party but are now less extreme, hold 18% of the seats in the Riksdag. The center-right Moderates once folded them, but is now cooperating with them. Lisa Pelling from Arena Idé, a progressive think tank in Stockholm, was involved in writing a book about districts where the Sweden Democrats are doing well. It’s tough reading for leftists. “Voters may be affected by service cuts or poor schools, but they see their problems entirely through crime and immigration,” she says.
During his heyday, Nordic Social Democrats used to win 40% or more of the votes. Now they are lucky to get 30%. It forces them into fragile coalitions: when Andersson negotiated pensions with the Socialist Left Party, the Center Party repressed by voting down her budget. Its leader, Annie Loof, said Andersson betrayed “the broad center”. Andersson was forced to resign after seven hours of service. She returned a few days later and led a minority government, but the opposition adopted its own budget in confusion. She’s stuck with it now.
Voters who move directly across immigration often also become more economically conservative. In Finland, the populist Finn party, which once supported more progressive taxes, has become laissez-faire. Left-wing parties are worried that Sanna Marin, Finland’s popular young Social Democratic prime minister, will appeal to the most hip elites. It did not help when she missed a telephone alarm in December that a colleague had covid-19; she was out at a nightclub with celebrities.
The left’s new vision partly revolves around climate change. Strangely enough, green parties are doing badly in the Nordic countries; other left-wing parties take their votes. When Labor won the election in Norway in September, the country’s Greens won only three of the 169 seats in parliament. Yet the Social Democrats’ climate policy is not always ambitious. In their coalition agreement, Labor and the Center Party of Norway said they would let companies look for more oil and gas in the country’s large offshore fields.
Inequality can be a more promising issue. The Nordic income after tax is relatively similar for rich countries, but has increased less since the 1990s. There are major differences between rural and urban areas in health care. In Sweden, the Left Party’s new leader, Nooshi Dadgostar, daughter of Iranian immigrants, has mostly ignored identity politics in favor of class issues such as the abolition of for-profit private schools.
The clearest vision of the future of the Nordic model is in northern Sweden, where hydropower drives climate-friendly industries. The huge Northvolt plant will supply batteries to large parts of Europe’s electric vehicle industry. The city of Luleå, where a carbon-free factory for “green steel” has just opened, is building 5,000 new homes. Green jobs and public benefit are good terrain for the left. Elsewhere, the Nordic left’s program is a bit of one smorgasbord, but its politicians are optimistic. “We’ve been on the defensive for maybe 30 years,” said Dragsted. – We’re going on the offensive now. ■
This article appeared in the European section of the print edition under the heading “Back in charge”
