(Sweden) THIS ELECTION has been CANCELLED. Next departure in 2018.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30306992

Enjoy the chaos.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Will Reinfeldt be leading the Moderates in this election?

Nope, Anna Kinberg Batra will be elected as their new leader in January, and she has already unofficially taken over after Reinfeldt.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Will Reinfeldt be leading the Moderates in this election?

Nope, Anna Kinberg Batra will be elected as their new leader in January, and she has already unofficially taken over after Reinfeldt.

Her background sounds upper class/upper middle class. Is that going to be a problem? How posh is she?

Well lets just put it like this, when she first ran for parliament she uttered these infamous words while  being interviewed: "People from Stockholm are, in my opinion, smarter than country hicks." (Loose translation)

...So yeah!

Anyway nowadays she's married to folksy and popular comedian David Batra. So at least she has that.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Poll from Sverige tycker.

Who do you want to see as Prime Minister after the elections:

37% - Stefan Löfvén (S)
28% - Anna Kinberg Batra (M)
11% - Annie Lööf (C)
  8% - Jimmie Åkesson (SD)
  6% - Jonas Sjöstedt (V)
  3% - Gustav Fridolin (MP) / Jan Björklund (FP)
  2% - Göran Hägglund (KD)
>1% - Åsa Romsson (MP) / Mattias Karlsson (SD)

There are so many amusing things with this poll. Too bad it's from a polling firm I've never ever heard of before.

Anyway if we ponder that it is indeed correct, the number of people who wants the next government lead by a left-wing Prime Minister, and the ones who wants a Prime Minister from the Alliance, is almost equal.     

Hopefully red-greens run a good campaign and put the blame where it belongs.

They can try, but so far the indicators seem to be that they're not so good at pinning the blame on their opponents.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Sverige tycker has now also released a traditional opinion poll:

V - 4,2%
S - 31,0%
MP- 5,8%

Government + supporters = 41,1%

M - 26,9%
C - 7,4%
FP - 4,8%
KD - 4,3%

Alliance = 43,4%

SD -14,0%

Others (including FI) - 1,6% (chuckles)

 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Göran has a way of dominating the conversation completely without raising his voice, he has massive amounts of confidence bordering on arrogance which some people might find off-putting but i personally find very reassuring.

Boarding? I do think a lot of people would argue that the "boarding on" should not be in front of the "arrogance" part.    

Anyway Göran Persson has had a huge up-swing in popularity post-premiership in Sweden. Both among the left and the right funnily enough. The Left because they see him as a competent and strong leader capable of winning elections, something they haven't had since him, and the right because he was a rather right-wing and fiscally responsible Social Democrat who doesn't mind calling out the Left Party and the Greens.

A boost of popularity once a politician is out of office is however nothing unusual. Everything is better viewed through nostalgic glasses. But it should be remembered that one of the major factors of the centre-left loss in 2006 was how sick the general public was of Göran Persson and especially his arrogance.

I should mention that I despised the man with a passion back in '06, but I'm one of those who've come around to him in later years, when he's removed far from power and is only brought out to deliver one-line zingers to his own party and their support troops.    

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Sweden’s two govt parties and Left Party ally would get 44.1% of votes if election held today vs 40.8% for four-party opposition in Dagens Nyheter/Ipsos poll.

Social Democrats, Green Party and Left Party backed by 44.1% vs 43.6% in Sept. 14 election; four-party opposition supported by 40.8% vs 39.4%

Social Democrats of PM Stefan Loefven backed by 32% vs 31% in election, Green Party by 6.7% vs 6.9%, Left Party by 5.4% vs 5.7%

Opposition Moderates backed by 26.3% vs 23.3%, Liberal Party by 5.6% vs 5.4%, Center Party by 5.1% vs 6.1%, Christian Democrats by 3.9% vs 4.6%

Sweden Democrats  backed by 12.5% vs 12.9%

Ipsos poll of 1,403 people was conducted from Dec. 8-15

Considering Ipsos last poll before the September election gave the centre-left 52,1%... I consider this very good news. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I was shocked when the early elections were called. I was even more shocked when they were called off. But this is a relief for 7 out of 9 parties, so we should be happy.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I was shocked when the early elections were called. I was even more shocked when they were called off. But this is a relief for 7 out of 9 parties, so we should be happy.

Apart from SD which one is the second non-relieved party? V?

I was thinking about FI. This was their second chance getting into Parliament. When 2018 rolls around there's a serious risk they've fallen into oblivion once more. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

The more important thing will be now if the "government" can pass anything important in the next years (and with whom), or if it will fall apart at just a later point once again ...

Well the deal struck between the Government and the Alliance is that they will not obstruct the government's budget. (Meaning the government will be able to raise taxes and so on)

They will also have broad bipartisan negotiations on Pensions, Defense, and Energy between the six parties.

There are also a few minor policy changes that the government might have good realistic chances of passing with the help of jumping majorities, but a lot of their policies will still be wing-clipped.   

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

Well it doesn't make a big difference, SD will continue to grow and it's interesting to see when it reach the size, where they can't be ignored anymore.

It is no secret the two of us have greatly differing opinions and ideological viewpoints on this issue Ingemann, but I will try to answer this as objectively as I can.   

If you ask me, they're already at the size were they can't be ignored. Everything that has happened politically in this country since the election has happened because of the Sweden Democrats. There hasn't been a single news story about politics since September that wasn't about the other parties' relation to them, how to handle them, or in any other way linked to the Sweden Democrats. The only political issue that is on the agenda today is immigration, even if the seven other parties tries to pretend otherwise. SD makes the political weather. That is not being ignored, and that is not being with-out influence. 

Now I understand, that what you mean is: how much more do the party grow before there has to be political concessions to them on immigration policy?   

The thing you have to understand, in order to understand why no party has been willing to rethink their immigration position to align themselves closer to SD is that in all parties there are people who really and truly believe SD are complete Nazis, and if you give them the finger, it is only a matter of time before we are handing out stars and pink triangles to people. Any sort of nearing towards the Sweden Democrats in their mind, is seen as equal to the parties in Weimar Germany allowing Hitler to take power.

While there are several politicians in at least five out of the seven other parliamentary parties who would openly or secretly welcome a similar development to Denmark, there are as many in the parties who would rather leave their party than stand any form of nearing to the Sweden Democrats because of this.

This means that a party would not only have to have a leadership that themselves are willing to take a Danish approach, they also have to be willing to split their own party in the process, and risk that their former coalition partners flee them. The benefit of the position change does in other words have to be great enough to weigh up huge internal fighting and negative press.     

I am sure you will think it is stupid. (You usually don't have very high regards of Swedish intelligence) But that is how it is viewed over on this side of Öresund, and that is the reason that the Swedish political elite treats this issue the way they do, and why there won't be any change in position in the near future. 

So is Sweden becoming more and more like Austria where the major parties end up forming perpetual grand coalitions to keep out the neo-nazi racist party?

Well as I'm sure you can understand DL, it is either going the Austrian way, or the Danish way. 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

So is Sweden becoming more and more like Austria where the major parties end up forming perpetual grand coalitions to keep out the neo-nazi racist party?

Well as I'm sure you can understand DL, it is either going the Austrian way, or the Danish way. 

The Austrian Way on this issue includes <snip>

When I say the Austrian way, I mean it as a simplified way of saying broad cooperation from left and right. I am of course aware of the fact that it isn't entirely correct historically as Austria (together with Italy) was the first Western European country to open up to a so called populist xenophobic party, even before Denmark. Just as when I say the Denmark way, that is only a simplified way of saying the other parties adapting to and including the party.

1. I imagine this segment must be quite small in Folkpartiet. How is the status in Centre?

2. KD seems already to have begun adjusting their immigration policy in a tougher direction.

3. At the end of the day the party that matters is the Moderates. If Sweden were to follow a  "Danish way"  (or even a "Norwegian way" with a shared government) SD and M could do it without the two small liberal parties and under the right circumstances also without KD.

So it is the internal dynamics in M that will be decisive, incl. whether the party is prepared to dump their Social Liberal option(s) (as the Liberals in Denmark dropped theirs). It is worth remembering that you risk handing over "free" coalition partners to the SocDems if you take that road as a Conservative party. The Danish Liberals did it in a situation where two of our three centrist parties were already "dead" (or dying in the case of KrF/KD).
The fact that the small Swedish centre-right parties are quite right wing on economics at the moment may make this less risky.

   

Folkpartiet is an odd party. It might be a correct analysis that the segment is smaller in FP, historically they have been the most pro-immigration party on the right, and despite the fact that Venstre is their official Danish sister party, when you look at their historic base and roots they're much more closely aligned to Radikale, which of course tells you something. But they were also flirting with the idea of stricter immigration policies in the early 2000's, and it was the FP mayor of Landskrona (now a Member of Parliament) who first neared SD on the local level, so it isn't entirely sure that it is smaller.

I could write an entire novel on the divisions on this issue within my own party, heck I could probably write a book just around my own local party club's division, but I'll leave it at the fact that such a section exist, and are in certain local councils very influential. But this is the party that two years ago was saying they might want completely free immigration so it isn't we that will take the leap.

The Moderates probably has the largest section, and while the similar sections in C, FP, and S who work very discretely, there are several people in the party openly calling for the Moderates to take that direction. That being said, between Reinfeldt and Anna Kinberg Batra the national leadership is dead-set against it.

KD is the obvious candidate. They're a Conservative party with Conservative values (make of that what you wish) and they desperately need a winning profile issue, and in difference to M, C, and FP their youth-wing isn't against the idea, quite the opposite Christian Democratic Youth could actually be described as the cheerleaders of such a development. Still even if they were to take the plunge... it's KD, their influence and the grand scale of things is well...   
 

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

The Liberal People's Party is traditionally the most pro-immigrant?

I'm sure I remember about a decade ago the BBC was lumping them in with the National Front and Pim Fortuyn because they supposedly questioned immigration. Although the comparison itself was obviously sensationalist I imagine there was at least a little truth to the Liberals taking on the immigration issue.

If you'd read the entire section, you'd have had the answer. 

Folkpartiet is an odd party. It might be a correct analysis that the segment is smaller in FP, historically they have been the most pro-immigration party on the right, and despite the fact that Venstre is their official Danish sister party, when you look at their historic base and roots they're much more closely aligned to Radikale, which of course tells you something. But they were also flirting with the idea of stricter immigration policies in the early 2000's, and it was the FP mayor of Landskrona (now a Member of Parliament) who first neared SD on the local level, so it isn't entirely sure that it is smaller.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

What is the majority view in Sweden with regards to immigration?

There was an opinion poll on the topic in May by SIFO which gave the following:

44% - Immigration is too high.
36% - Immigration is at a good level as is.
10% - Immigration is too low.