Asked whether there was any truth to reports in the Swedish media that the far-right party might be willing to drop its demand for its first ministerial posts if that allowed the right-wing parties to win over the Centre Party and so form a government, Åkesson insisted the party's stance was unchanged.
"I have no new position. We are not going to give up any of our demands," he said, arguing that it was up to the Centre Party – which is refusing to support a government that has Left Party ministers or Sweden Democrat influence – to shift its position.
"We have no red lines. We are not the problem; rather, it is other parties that have a bunch of red lines. And a prerequisite for anything to happen is that other parties give up their red lines."
He later argued that as the Sweden Democrats are one of the largest parties in the parliament it was "pretty unreasonable" to expect it to yield, rather than the smaller centrist parties, which he accused of causing "a great deal of parliamentary chaos in Sweden over a very long time".
'Nothing particularly dramatic'
The Sweden Democrats had an unexpectedly poor election result, dropping three percentage points on their result in 2022, but Åkesson played down his party's setback, claiming that he had been surprised throughout the last four years that his party's polling had remained stable even after winning real political power.
"I can say quite honestly that a potential drop in support after four years of taking responsibility and making compromises was part of the calculation when we entered this cooperation four years ago, so we had expected to take a hit from cooperating and compromising with the center-right parties," he said. "It's nothing particularly dramatic; I think all analysts foresaw that this could happen."
He attributed part of the party's drop in support to the so-called 'Churchill Effect', when a politician succeeds so well in their goals that voters no longer see a need to keep them in power and vote for the opposition (just as Britain's wartime leader Winston Churchill lost an election in July 1945 just two months after helping win the Second World War).
"They said we would collapse when we got power. We haven't. On the contrary, the Sweden Democrats remain a large party," he said.
No plans to resign
Åkesson also denied that he had any plans to take a temporary break from leading the party – something that the broadcaster TV4 reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources within the party.
"And I'm not going to resign," he added quickly before public broadcaster SVT shifted away from his press conference to cover the arrival of Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson at the Swedish parliament to meet Speaker Andreas Norlén, adding later "I'm not going to take a 'pause' either."
He said it was impossible to know who these sources were, but suggested that they were "not particularly well-informed if they even exist".
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