The Big Bad Swedish Politics & News Thread

[Estrella]

The Liberals's Party Board have announced that their goal in 2022 is to return a centre-right government. If they manage to stay in government, they almost certainly would join an M+KD government, even if it had external support from SD.

If they manage to survive, even narrowly, that would greatly boost the chances of a conservative government. If they narrowly miss the threshold, however, they could take hundreds of thousands of votes and a dozen seats with them, and risk such a government (not unlike FI narrowly missing in 2014 and taking 195,000 votes and 15 seats that could have boosted the centre-left coalition).

The declaration must be confirmed by the party council vote as well.

How did Liberals even get to where they are now? I know this isn't the first time they're trying to shift to the right (there was some anti-immigration stuff in the early 2000s), but they've always been essentially a classical liberal party, right?. Surely it would have made more sense for Centre to do this and for Liberals to be led by someone like Annie Lööf* and transform into sort-of libertarians?

* There's, um, this: youtube.com/watch?v=4F1QdZoqPsI

[Estrella]

Notes:
1) There is no possible way that I could've been surprised by the fact that some of the leading critics of the January Agreement are from Västerbotten. This totally checks out with the degree of disdain I felt from C members I met when I lived in Umeå and was still a member of S. Also, as someone who grew up in Norrland surrounded by plenty of left-leaning people who despised Maud Olofsson, I found it hilarious to see her described as a "goddess of the Norrland prairies". Especially considering that you can't really find much of a prairie anywhere in Norrland.

I wonder how a prolonged S-C partnership on the national level will impact the party in the North. Especially in those places like Vindeln and Robertsfors where C have been the main opposition party to S and pretty much see them as sworn enemies.

[SNIP]

4) Maybe I should feel pity for those C members who are genuinely despairing in this new political landscape where they feel like their only option is supporting an S-led government. But I can't help but to think back to those CUF (and LUF) members I met in Umeå around the time of the 2014 election. Those who were utterly convinced that if any party would break the cordon sanitaire around SD it would be S. Obviously because S completely lacked principles and would do anything for power, unlike the brave and principled defenders of democracy that you could find in the four Alliance parties. I just can't help but to feel a little bit of schadenfreude.

Actually, why is this the case? Why is Västerbotten's Centre Party so hostile to the SAP? In most other northern regions, don't they usually work together? I know Västerbotten has a peculiar history but I don't understand the region too well.

Can you tell us more about that?

[Estrella]

Not that Kristersson inspires much confidence, but Socdems’ popularity could be just the typical Swedish/Norwegian pattern of governments polling absolutely dogshxt numbers through the term and then getting reelected anyway.