Leader of the Swedish Social Democrats resign... again.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Slightly surprised that he held out for as long as he did. Not much more to add, other than to hope that future leadership candidates are throughly vetted.

This really depresses me. If what was once the strongest and most effective social-democratic party in the world is screwed that bad, the humanity's future looks really bleak.

I'm not sure if you can extrapolate self-inflicted internal idiocy (which, admittedly, the SAP had been remarkably free of - compared to most of its sister parties - until recently, but that's beside the point) of a political party into a forecast of eternal bleakness for humanity as a whole.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I didn't follow this at all after they picked Juholt, who, I vaguely remember thinking at the time, seemes like a nice, if slightly eccentric, guy. How did he goof up?

Basically an expenses scandal.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Eh... the SAP has all kinds of longterm issues (some the usual stuff, quite a bit also relating to simply not being used to losing elections) and you can read pages about it on the 2010 election thread, but sometimes a serious scandal is just a serious scandal. And I think there have been other scandals (less serious? I've not been following things all that closely so may be wrong about that) involving Juholt as well.

Though it obviously the situation gets really bad if that sort of thing happens when there are also longterm problems. I'd add 'and if there are also factional issues' but that's a given in a social democratic party.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

More on this later.

Do you want to use the old thread on the IE board or start a fresh one?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

the fact Juholt lied and said there had never been a first proposal that he had blocked.

Lord. Almost enough to make you wonder whether he was actually some kind of plant. But then no plant would ever be so obviously stupid.