The Big Bad Swedish Politics & News Thread

[DC Al Fine]

I've got 2 questions for you Swedish Cheese:

1) What kind of "hard right" are the Sweden Democrats? Are they more like UKIP, Geert Wilders or Neo-Nazis?

2) What separates the Moderate, Centre, People's and Christian Democratic parties? The names don't really lend any distinction.

[DC Al Fine]

I've got 2 questions for you Swedish Cheese:

1) What kind of "hard right" are the Sweden Democrats? Are they more like UKIP, Geert Wilders or Neo-Nazis?

2) What separates the Moderate, Centre, People's and Christian Democratic parties? The names don't really lend any distinction.

1) They're not Neo-Nazis. By European standards their anti-immigration policies are slightly tamer than your general hard-right, and the party tries to make it's arguments based on opposition to multi-culturalism and nationalism rather than racial supremiacy. They're as anti-EU as they get though.

2) All three parties are quite similar on economic issues these days supporting fiscal responsibility and little government intervention in commerce, and lower taxes. They're set apart by social issues really.

The Christian Democrats oppse abortion and gay rights and support traditional Christian values.

The Centre party is liberal on social issues, and enviormentalist, and want do decentralise the governement and are slightly EU-sceptic. (The only government party not supporting the Euro)

The Moderates are moderate on social issues, they're the strongest supporters for a large military and are more supportive of unions and labour-protection than the rest of the right. 

Thanks.

[DC Al Fine]

Why are there no social conservatives? I know Sweden is liberal, but shouldn't the Akeson/the KD leader be more conservative?

[DC Al Fine]

My solution would be, stop funding these companies and give this money to the public hospitals and schools instead. If you want to be a for-profit company, there's no reason the State should subsidize you.

Ah but then you get the problem that only the wealthy can buy private alternatives. I can assure you that it's not a solution that'd be accepted by anyone on the swedish left.

Who cares, as long as the public options are of good quality?

Well, there will be more people in the public system than in the private one, so, rich people using private option will get care quicker.

I'm assuming that "good quality" includes roughly equal wait times.

[DC Al Fine]

It's worth noting that though it's true that SD has gained more from M than SAP, the difference (in 2010) was very small, and most SD voters are people who usually didn't turn out to vote.  

One other difference is that right wing extremism still has some Nazi-taint in Sweden, whereas its Danish (and to a lesser degree Norwegian) roots where in the national conservative right wing of our WW2 resistance movements. But this difference is not that important anymore.
 

That's very interesting. Could you give some more detail about the national conservative politics and how it morphed into PP/DPP?

[DC Al Fine]

Immigrant heavy areas are the ones that stayed Social Democrat all the way through. Are the upper middle class suburbs in Northeastern Stockholm?

[DC Al Fine]

Can someone explain what church elections are fought over?

[DC Al Fine]

The left sweeps the ground with the right on all issues but one, including the two that actually matters (education and job creation), and the thing MA takes from it is that its unfair that voters don't think the left is best at everything. Are left-wingers never happy?

No, they are realistic and see than the only things the right is doing better than the left is getting the wealthy even more wealthy and enabling religion to have a place in public life.

No, they are realistic and see the only things the left does better than the right is endorse drug use and destroy the family. ..

See, I can be a partisan hack too

[DC Al Fine]

Can we please please get back on topic?

[DC Al Fine]

Why do the Liberals poll so well on education?