There was no doubt which image would be leading the news bulletins: at the end of their joint press conference the Sweden Democrat leader, Jimmie Åkesson, had gone in for a handshake, but Liberal leader Simona Mohamsson went in for a hug.
Maybe it was a spontaneous embrace, or maybe it was calculated to send a message to Mohamsson’s coalition partners: that they could trust her to stick with their right-wing project. In return please, pretty please, lend us enough votes to stay in parliament.
But will hugging Åkesson close be enough to save the Liberals from oblivion?
Behind the embrace was a deal: the Liberals (currently polling at a microscopic two percent) will agree to let the Sweden Democrats (polling a commanding twenty percent) appoint ministers in a future right-wing government. In return, the Sweden Democrats agreed to policy proposals, including a referendum on joining the euro in 2030, constitutional protections of academic freedom, and transferring schools from local council control to state control.
This agreement was negotiated by Mohamsson and her closest advisers, without the knowledge of the rest of the party. Just five months earlier the party had voted to keep the Sweden Democrats out of government.
This rapid reversal has left many Liberals with political whiplash.
The decision to move now was prompted by panic that their already awful popularity figures were getting even worse. The hope is that enough other right-wing voters will lend their votes to keep the Liberals, and the current coalition, in the game.
Yet reversing course forces the party into an uncomfortable reckoning:
The Sweden Democrats define themselves largely by their opposition to liberalism. Their ideology values tradition and a collectivist approach to society. In his autobiography Jimmie Åkesson accused the “social-liberal establishment” of creating a “divided, segregated – soulless – society”.
For their part, being opposed to nationalism was once an important part of Liberals’ identities. Simona Mohamsson used to be a steadfast opponent of the Sweden Democrats. They were “founded by veterans of Swedish Nazism and fascism”, she once said. Note that while the Sweden Democrats are doing well in the polls, they’re also a deeply polarising force – in a poll in December from Novus, 56 percent said they “absolutely did not want” to see them in government. No other party was that disliked.
Any hope that their allies in the Moderates or – always more unlikely – the Sweden Democrats would encourage their voters to lend their votes to the Liberals were quickly quashed. Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he would only ever encourage votes for his own party. Sweden Democrat politicians were similarly cool towards the idea. Both parties might reason that they can make up the two percent without the Liberals.
The worst case scenario is that not only do right-wing voters not come to their aid, but that many among the remaining 2 percent Liberal rump will peel off to vote for other parties. Ominously, many elected Liberal politicians are already quitting their roles in the party ahead of a congress planned for this weekend. Åkesson’s warm embrace may prove to be the kiss of death for the Liberal Party.
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