On Thursday, Sweden’s Social Democrat Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson stepped down after right-wing Sweden Democrats and their center-right allies secured a parliamentary majority in Sunday’s election.
“Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson will officially resign from her post on Thursday, after she accepted defeat in a close-fought election, handing victory to the four-party right-wing opposition bloc, and giving them the first go at forming a new government,” the French TV channel Euro News reported.
Prime Minister Andersson acknowledged that the right-wing opposition has managed to win a majority in a narrowly contested election. The right-wing bloc had a “narrow majority, but a majority nonetheless,” she noted Thursday.
With over 99 percent of the votes accounted for, the right-wing bloc is set to win 176 seats in the 349-seat parliament. While Andersson’s ruling Social Democrats emerged as the biggest party with 30.5 percent (ahead of the Sweden Democrats, who secured 20.5 percent of the vote), the right-wing bloc won close to 50 percent of the votes, as well as the majority of the seats on the parliament.
This is the first time in Sweden Democrats’ 34-year history that they will be part of a government.
The news agency Reuters summed up the party’s agenda:
The Sweden Democrats aim to make Sweden the European Union’s toughest on immigration policy including legislation making it possible to deny people seeking asylum based on religious or LGBTQ grounds.The party wants to slash economic benefits for immigrants and give more powers to police, including zones in troubled areas allowing searches without concrete suspicion of a crime.
The right-wing party’s rise to power has shocked Europe’s political and media establishment. “In Sweden, a bastion of tolerance, a nationalist and anti-immigrant party is on the cusp of joining a right-wing coalition in government,” Germany’s government-run Deutsche Welle commented.
Others worried Sweden could abandon the European woke project and turn to its national and cultural roots. Left-wing British newspaper The Guardian lamented that the new government might usher in “a period where Swedishness and loyalty to Swedish values defined from above would be of central importance and would permeate school and university courses, libraries, culture, and the civil service.”
The New York Times and The Washington Post were equally dismayed. The NTY pondered how “anti-immigration Sweden Democrats beat out more moderate right-wing parties in a country famed for liberal governance.” The right-wing victory “promises to upend … country’s reputation as a haven for progressive, pluralistic ideals,” the WaP0 wrote.
The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats beat out more moderate right-wing parties in a country famed for liberal governance. It is the latest example of the right’s staying power across Europe.
Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party was among the first to congratulate its “sister party,” the Sweden Democrats. The election result is a “turning point for the Scandinavian country,” the AfD declared. “Excessive crime and unchecked migration have made the Swedes reconsider that the Social Democrats, who have been in power for a long time, no longer make politics in the interest of ordinary Swedes,” the German opposition party added.
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