Far Right Advances in Swedish Elections

Morning after the elections in Sweden-the headline in European Voice says "Sweden Wakes Up to a Far-Right Hangover". This is indeed one of the big questions of the election results. The Swedish Democrats, a party with neo-nazi roots, won 20 seats, denying the centre-right coalition that won the elections the possibility to form a majority government. The winners are now trying to get the Greens on board the coalition-something that is understandably difficult from a democratic point of view, since the Greens were running together with the Social Democrats and the Left wing party in the same coalition against the centre-right.

The other big question is the bad result of the Social Democrats, who suffered the worst electoral defeat since 1914, messing up a ten percentage point lead they had in the polls in the middle of the term. Sweden is a country in which the Social Democrats have had an almost unquestioned dominance in politics for such a long time, that the result inevitably raises many questions. One answer is that the centre-right has moved firmly towards the centre. They look rather Social Democrat themselves, to be honest. In the same time, the Social Democrats made a decision to form a coalition with the former communists, which of course alienated socially liberal voters. The centre-right also managed the economic crisis in a good way, and have been able to convince voters that they will not steel the milk from small children or other unpleasant rightist things, but have been responsible and trustworthy, largely thanks to the very clever Minister of Finance, Anders Borg.

So, what will the impact be on the country, and how will young people be affected? As an immigrant, my impressions of the election campaign are of course from an outsider perspective, so there are probably more qualified analysts that my self. And to make predictions is often unwise in politics-anything can happen. One thing that struck me, though, was that the campaign was rater superficial. It seems that the political messages are produced in communications agencies rather than among party activists. I think I read somewhere that Tony Blair has said party programs and the likes are useless, since political leaders need more to react to singular questions than elaborate comprehensive ideas, and this seems to be the case also here. And it is true that the parties and newspapers were very much stressing for example how many euros you will gain/lose, depending on which coalition wins. So, if you are retired you will gain 10€ a year more if you vote left and if you earn 4000€ a month you will gain 15 € more per annum if you vote right. I believe it is a bit worrying that parties don't seem to reflect on society and the future as a whole-it undermines the political system in the long run, I believe.

During the campaign, all the parties were talking about youth unemployment. Now it remains to be seen what the concrete measures will be. One of he failures of the last government was that it did not make it easier for small companies to employ young people, now I think that they will very much be measured on if they succeed this time. In the same time, this should be done without reducing young people from human beings to bare human capital. Lets see, interesting times ahead.