For the first time in its history, Sweden is getting a government that will be dependent on the support of the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats. The parliament in Stockholm on Monday elected Ulf Kristersson from the bourgeois moderates as head of government with 176 to 173 votes. Kristersson’s minority government of moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals will take office on Tuesday. The Sweden Democrats, once co-founded by the Nazis, are not officially part of the government, but as a supporting party they are now an indispensable part of the right-wing power bloc.
The cooperation agreement presented by the new partners at the end of last week is considered by political observers to be a great success for the Sweden Democrats. Although they don’t sit in the government with ministers, they were able to negotiate their own coordination office at the seat of government – and managed to ensure that a large part of their ideas on foreigners and migration policy are now official government policy in Sweden. The liberal newspaper speaks of a “jackpot for the Sweden Democrats”. Days Nyheter.
The program not only includes doubling the penalties for gang criminals, restricting family reunification for refugees and reducing asylum immigration to the lowest possible level that EU law still allows. For example, the new coalition would also like to investigate the extent to which immigrants can be denied the right to an interpreter.
What you don’t like should go
In addition, one wants to examine the possibility of being able to deport foreign citizens because of “inadequate lifestyle”. This can be, for example, involvement in prostitution or drug abuse, or a way of life that threatens “the basic Swedish values”. The agreement states, among other things, that anyone residing in Sweden is obliged “not to behave in a way that displeases the population”. Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar asked on Monday who would want to determine what constitutes a “poor lifestyle” in the government: “That opens the floodgates to life-threatening legal uncertainty and authoritarian arbitrariness.”
Above all, extra-parliamentary parts of the Liberal Party, which previously saw itself as the defender of freedom and humanism, are now in turmoil. Outgoing Liberal MP Barbe Westerholm said she was “so naive to think that the Sweden Democrats would never have that much influence”. Former Liberal party leader Maria Leissner called the program “xenophobic.” The youth organization of the Liberals asked the parliamentarians in advance to vote against Ulf Kristersson in vain. The agreement is “authoritarian point by point”.
Incumbent Liberal Party leader Johan Persson defended his approval of the deal. Any compromise is “a give and take”. Liberalism in 2022 must accept that “the great threat to freedom in this country is that people are being shot.”
Shortly before the vote, the Sweden Democrats were again caught up in a scandal: the prominent SD influencer Rebecka Fallenkvist had commented on Instagram after reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” that after the first 50 pages Anne Frank was “so far only immoral happened. The horniness itself.” The SD leadership distanced itself and announced an internal investigation.