Sweden’s far-right Victor’s Pose Challenge
The Sweden Democrats won 20% of the seats in the country’s parliament and are likely to dictate the political agenda of the next government.
The leader of the Moderates, Ulf Kristersson, must make a real move to form a new coalition government that could possibly include the far-right anti-immigration party Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna or SD).
Sweden’s parliamentary elections on September 11 changed the political landscape of this most laissez-faire Nordic state, after the Sweden Democrats won 20% of the seats in the Riksdag, the national parliament. The ousted Social Democrats will continue in caretaker capacity until a new government is formed sometime this month.
How do you construct a stable government with the SDs as a coalition partner? The upper echelons of the Liberals and Christian Democrats are less than enthusiastic about sharing power with a far-right party that pushed an anti-immigration and tough-on-gang agenda.
However, Kristersson cannot ignore SD’s rise as a force in Swedish politics. That election result gives SD serious leverage in the government formation negotiations and in a possible new central government.
Kristersson hopes to form a new government from the country’s four liberal-conservative parties, which together received a bare majority in the Riksdag with 349 seats. Kristersson will try to form a coalition consisting of the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Sweden Democrats.
The SD may refuse to join a coalition of three or four parties, led by moderates, if they fail to agree on a political agenda that includes tight limits on immigration and tougher laws to deal with the upsurge in gang-related violence. According to the latest police statistics, 274 gang-related shootings have resulted in 48 deaths in Sweden since January 2022. Growing public anger over the now daily gang shootings on Swedish streets proved to be the bedrock on which the SD broke its successes in the September 11 election.
In the government formation talks, Kristersson will be aware of the need to address record levels of gang violence and crime but resistant to SD’s pressure to move politics and government in free-thinking, libertarian Sweden too far to the right.