The Big Bad Swedish Politics & News Thread

[Lurker]

I was somewhat surprised by the placing of the party leaders on the Political Compass. Is Reinfeldt now (slightly) to the left  of the leaders of the other 'bourgeois' parties, when it comes to economic policy? And is this true for the parties in general as well - i.e. are Centerpartiet and Folkpartiet now to the right of Moderaterna in many aspects?

[Lurker]

Actually, both the Moderates and the Social Democrats have bizarrely thin benches.

The selection of Mona Sahlin as party leader is a great example of that. Still can't believe that Socialdemokraterna made such an absurd decision. After what happened in '95, and Sahlin's coverage in the press, anyone must have been a better choice, surely (even a random backbencher). Could anyone explain this choice?

That they couldn't manage to find a single leadership candidate amongst 110-or-so MPs, would also seem to prove this point - although in fairness, Löfven appears to be doing well.

[Lurker]

And he's [Fälldin] still alive. I met two of his grandkids at the Centre Youth Congress. ^^

Have Fälldin made any statements on what he thinks of the Centre Party of today (certainly much more right-wing than in his time)? And what is the feeling amongst older Centre members in general about the current direction of the party?

[Lurker]

Interesting to see that Löfven has finally caught up with Reinfeldt in the "preferred PM" polls. If this is sustained Moderaterna will have lost their greatest advantage over the past few years.

[Lurker]

Would such a traffic-light coalition work in Sweden? It was tried a few times on State level in Germany, and always  failed miserably (typically the FDP walked out on a minor issue after 2-3 years). In general, coalitions involving both the Greens and the FDP were a disaster here (the black-green-yellow "Jamaica" coalition on the Saar was in 2012 killed by the FDP, while CDU and Greens got along reasonably well with each other).

Bit hard to say whether it would work, as the Social Democrats hasn't been in a coalition with Folkpartiet for 70 years (in the unity goverment of WW2). However, considering how right-wing Folkpartiet has become, I have a very hard time seeing it happening. It would probably be unpopular with most of Folkpartiet's voters. Also, the Right-wing press (which includes 90% of Swedish newspapers) would probably attack the party very strongly if they joined a coalition lead by the Social Democrats.

[Lurker]

Yeah yeah, 90% of Swedish newspapers are owned by the right, and 90% of their employees vote for the left, we've heard it all before. Funny that neither left nor right ever does anything wrong, it's just the biased media twisting their actions.

The former idea seems to have more truth in it than the latter though.  Ftr, I do not in any way think that the Swedish left are flawless - my "90%" estimate (which referred to the papers' editorial lines) was not intended as partisan hackery, though it can obviously appear that way. It is simply my impression from the Swedish newspapers that I've read that the majority leans right: While the left have Aftonbladet, the centre-right have DN, SvD, Expressen, etc.

[Lurker]

So, now that SD has supported the budget proposal of the Alliance, I guess we'll have a new Parliamentary Election in Sweden, in a couple of months?

That government certainly didn't last long.

[Lurker]

As expected. So, early elections then?

When will it presumably be held - January, February?

[Lurker]

Stockholm has always been a bourgeois city with little in the way of the union base that social democrats base their success on.

I wouldn't call it a "stronghold" of the right though, even though it's clearly more right-wing than Sweden at large (well, the county at large may be, but I imagine we're talking about Stockholms commune/ the actual city here). The Social Democrats has ran the city for a fair amount of the post-war years, though it has trended right-wing, and I believe the municipal election in 2014 gave a centre-left majority.

And Stockholm isn't really that right-wing for a Western European city. Helsinki, Oslo, Madrid, to name a few cases, have been right-leaning, and Paris was run by conservatives for decades as well. (You probably know this, as does most everyone here of course, but Americans always seem surprised at the idea of largeish cities being centre-right).

[Lurker]

What the f-UcK? Who morons let you enter this website? Gandhi spent almost his entire life in racist South Africa, so obviously he would absolutely detest Africans. Any other questions?

LOL

[Lurker]

Interesting to see the difference between official party position and voters when it comes to the Centre Party and the People's Party. (Though not that strange considering traditional voter base)

Also I can't help but wonder who the 2% SD sympathizers who wants to take more refugees are...  

Not really Sweden Democrats, just trolling the pollsters? Seems the most likely explanation.