Swedish election, 2018: Political Impasse, Löfven loses confidence vote

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C party council massively supports the deal with Löfven. 56-2 was the vote with only two representatives for C students voting against. Illustrates the fact that C has been much more united in seeking an accord with the centre-left than the Liberals

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Liberal's parliamentary group and party board recommends letting forward Löfven, but with more dissent. The vote was 13-7 in the parliamentary group, and 17-8 in the party board. Tomorrow, the party council will make the final decision.

Not a word has been uttered by the Left Party's leadership yet. However, former leader Lars Ohly states that the party has been humiliated by this deal (correct) and that they should not let forward Löfven with this deal.

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Inizio poll of the words voters choose to describe their feeling about the agreement.

From the top: Disappointment, distrust, resignation, relief, concerned, angry, hopeful, confident, happy, proud, none of the above, don't know.

So M, KD and SD voters quite uniformly chose the five negative words (disappointment, distrust, resignation, concerned, angry). V voters mostly relieved, but certainly some dissent already visible. For L+C, there is relief, hope, confidence and happiness, but also 10-15% for each of the three top negative words. S+MP are very relieved, hopeful and confident and the negative choices only picked by 5-7%.

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MP's party board accepts the deal as well. Hardly surprising.

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News bureau TT writes that "The Left Party leans towards voting no to Löfven". The Party Board will have a meeting today, and then the parliamentary group will meet tomorrow before Sjöstedt go to meet the Speaker. The article states that the decision is for the parliamentary group to make, but that they generally follow the advice of the Party Board in major decisions. TT estimates that there will probably be a majority against the deal in both the board and in parliament. Both due to the specific right-wing economic policies, and the deliberate humiliation of the Left Party (the statements about them not getting any influence).

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Liberals' party council votes to support the deal with 62-30. So now we await the Left Party's decision.

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If the Left Party is to reject the deal now and don't let forward Löfven, the most sensible way today is probably to ask for negotiations around the deal to make it acceptable for them. In that way, they can perhaps avoid some of the blame if we end up without a Löfven government. This government formation surely has given more exctitement than one could reasonbly ask for. We have just seen a Liberal party council live streamed for hours on the state broadcaster with a majority of the members explaining their decision by stating just how awful it would be to support a government dependent on SD. Are they now just going to turn 180 degrees in a few days and do exactly that if the Left Party rejects the deal? That would really be something. And even if they did, would SD accept such a government?

[Diouf]

  So if S was against family reunification of immigrants, are they developing an immigration policy closer to SD than the other parties?

Well, closer than V, MP, C and L yes. Not that a position to the right of them will necessarily tell you much But yes , they have tightened their policies, and were the driving force for the government to introduce some stricter laws when the refugee crisis was at its highest. However, they are still aggressively opposed to SD in the migration area, calling them racists etc. And were willing to make concessions in the government negotiations, so I wouldn't say they have moved nearly as much as the Danish Social Democrats for example.

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Demoskop poll for Expressen. Question: "Should the parties make the agreement?"

45% in favour, 48% opposed. 8% don't know.

Among C/L voters at the general election, 60% are in favour while 35% against. Among current C/L voters, 93% are in favour, so it's quite logically those opposed to cooperation with Löfven, that has left the two parties. The article mentions that 69% of V and MP voters are in favour of the deal, but doesn't mention the number for Social Democrats. Among Sweden Democrat voters, 93% are opposed to the deal, while M + KD are 78% opposed.

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Would be interesting to see what the Speaker does if that is indeed what V tells him?
Will he put forward Löfven anyway? It would be kind of weird if he did not when there has been a lot of energy and time devoted to this agreement, which is the biggest movement during the whole process. Of course, you can also argue that it would be weird to put forward Löfven twice in a row, without a majority. Perhaps also depends on the exact message of V. If they go for the "we are ready to negotiate about the agreement" line, then the Speaker would probably be more justified to put forward Löfven perhaps as there is then at least a theoretical chance that they could be convinced to vote blank.

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Left Party rejects the deal, and says it will not let forward Löfven under this agreement. Sjöstedt recommends that Kristersson is put forward for the PM vote, since the M-KD budget is the agreed budget for the year. He says they will have discussions with Löfven to remove the intolerable things from the agreement, so that they can let him forward.

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Speaker Norlen announces that he postpones the PM process by two days to allow for Löfven to gather enough support. So there will be a new Speaker round on Wednesday, then the Speaker will put forward his PM candidate. The vote will then be on Friday.

So now a few days to make an agreement as described by Lord Marbury above

[Diouf]

Löfven elected PM with a S-MP government.  115 voted yes (S + MP), 77 voted blank (C+V+L), 153 voted against (M-SD-KD).

A fairly long government formation by Swedish standards. Despite C and L drawing out the negotiations quite a lot, the direction of travel seemed clear throughout the process. The two parties' ideological commitment to mass migration/opposition to SD meant that there seemed a very little chance of them accepting a Kristersson government. Even after the two times, they voted down Löfven there was no indication that they would turn towards Kristersson. So looking at the S-C-L-MP deal, you can argue that S should/could have negotiated even tougher as C/L were never likely to choose another PM than him, and a new election looked likely to develop favourably for S and the centre-left. However, the final declaration of whether they conceded too much can probably only be made after the government has come to an end and its policies can be judged. Several of the proposed policies in the agreement are meant to go to commissions etc., and then a real agreement on the specifics are to be reached.

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Lol Swedish Christian Democrats at 12% in new Sentio poll. What the hell is happening?

C+L supporting Löfven's left wing government, Ebba Busch Thor being more charismatic/popular than Ulf Kristersson to pick up those votes. Also this latest poll was carried out just after KD opened for negotiations with SD on specific policy issues, something all parties had rejected so far. In that way, the party has taken the lead in creating a common right wing alternative to the current majority.

In the Sentio Poll, M-KD-SD have 49.3%, while the current centre-left majority is on 48.0%. And with L and MP under the threshold, there is a clear majority for the conservative opposition.

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New Liberal leader questions left-liberal cooperation



The Burundian-born Nyamko Sabuni has been elected the new leader of the Liberals. Sabuni was one of the critics of the party's decision to support the Social Democrats after the 2018 election, and she has been critical of the too leninent immigration policies of her party and country. She has described the country's integration policies as "a gigantic societal failure" and said that the lenient immigration policies, including those in the left-liberal governance agreement, were naive and increased the risk that Sweden would face another situation like in 2015 and 2016 with massive influxes it cannot control. She argued that a multicultural society "was nothing to strive for" and that this vision has instead caused segregated and isolated cultures. Rejected asylum seekers should be deported much faster, and should not get second chances to stay in Sweden, and she also wants more discipline in schools, and a bigger economic benefit for going from unemployment to work.
The question is whether the divided Liberals will be able to reconcile their differences on immigration, and on whether the Liberals should stay a part of the left-liberal majority cooperation.
Sabuni became a MP in 2002, and then served as Minister of Integration and Equality 2006-2010, and Minister of Equality and Deputy Education Minister 2010-2013. Since then she has worked in the private sector and didn't run in the 2014 or 2018 election.

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The first time since SD emerged that one of the other party leaders sit down for discussions on policy cooperation with the party. Kristersson from the Moderates said he does not plan to meet with Åkesson, but is pretty vague on whether there could be an opening for cooperation soon. New Liberal party leader Sabuni says that the party is not negotiating with SD, but also said that "when we get closer to the 2022 election, we will sit down and look at the political map before making decisions about the future". Annie Lööf is, of course, extremely critical of KD getting closer to SD.

https://twitter.com/jimmieakesson/status/1146049893968109568