Sweden

WITH almost all the votes counted in Sweden’s general election, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson resigned when it became clear that her centre-left government had lost to a right-wing bloc by three seats in the 349-seat parliament.

A close result, but hardly the ‘right-wing takeover’ the media prophesied with dread in order to send shivers up the spines of latte drinkers in Notting Hill. The Times lamented ‘the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a hard-right party with Nazi roots’ who have become the second largest party in Sweden with 20.06 per cent of the vote. The Sweden Democrats replaced the Moderate Party as the leading right-wing party. This is a spectacular advance from the low of 0.4 per cent in 1998 or the 1.4 per cent they gained in 2002.

Radical populists will ‘freeze’ the asylum system

Sweden’s radical right is demanding measures to deport foreign criminals, strip gang members of their citizenship and “freeze” the asylum system as its price for propping up a conservative-led government.

The country is poised for a sharp swing to the right after the populist Sweden Democrats came second in the general election on Sunday, establishing themselves as kingmakers in a finely balanced parliament. After three decades of being shut out by mainstream parties, they have been invited to join coalition talks for the first time.

The leader of Sweden’s incumbent Social Democrats conceded defeat in the country’s knife-edge election on Wednesday, handing victory to a loose bloc of rightwing parties that includes the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD).

The prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, called a press conference at which she accepted defeat, while pointing out that the Social Democrats remained Sweden’s largest party with more than 30% of the vote, and that the majority in parliament for the right bloc was very slim.

When postal votes and those of citizens living abroad were counted on Wednesday, a loose coalition of the SD and the three centre-right parties edged ahead to win a majority of three in the parliament of 349 seats.

The far-right Sweden Democrats party was the big winner in the country’s election on Sunday, increasing its share of the vote by two to three percentage points and becoming the second largest party, but the overall result was too close to call as counting continued.

With 95% of votes counted, the rightwing bloc had 49.7% of the vote, which would give it a majority of one seat in parliament over the incumbent leftwing bloc.

The far right appears close to causing an earthquake in Swedish politics, the Sweden Democrats becoming the country’s second-largest party while the wider rightwing bloc edged towards a slim victory over the incumbent centre-left.

Exit polls on Sunday night had suggested a narrow victory for the Social Democrats and their allies but as the votes were counted the tally swung towards the right.

With 90% of the vote counted, the right bloc of four parties had a share of the vote corresponding to a majority of three in the 349-seat parliament.

The right-wing Sweden Democrats are exploiting the failures of a globalist political elite.

The Sweden Democrats are on the brink of a huge electoral breakthrough. In the run-up to today’s General Election, polls have suggested the right-wing populists could become Sweden’s second-largest party, and the dominant force among the right-wing opposition. If the right wins – and currently it is level-pegging in the polls with the centre-left bloc led by the Social Democrats – there is even a chance that the Sweden Democrats could enter government.

A survey published this week has shown that the vast majority of “refugees” living in Sweden have vacationed in the country they fled from — though hardly any wish to ever return permanently.

The survey, which was conducted by the polling firm Novus, claims that, around 85 per cent of people living in Sweden born overseas have gone on vacation to their home country — and that among people who are supposed to be refugees the number is around 79 per cent, despite the fact they are in Sweden in the first place because they were supposedly forced to flee said home country.

The rise of far-right parties, gang violence and a strict immigration policy are among the main concerns for Swedish voters, who head to the polls on Sunday.

Sweden heads to the polls on September 11 in an election that could see a once-shunned far-right populist party make significant inroads, and with the help of right-wing opposition parties, even dislodge the ruling left-wing Social Democrats from power.

“I’m quite concerned about the rise of the far-right parties in this election,” said Nathalie Johansson, 35, an IT consultant based in Stockholm.

“Six months back, if you asked me what my main concern about the upcoming election was, I would have said it is how governments plan to address climate change. But right now, the far right’s power is worrying many of us,” she told DW.

An orgy of gang crime could swing the election

Last week, Sweden’s far-Right Sverigedemokraterna party published a slick campaign video, a sort of closing argument before this Sunday’s election. “Swedes,” Jimmie Åkesson, the party leader, said, “are not a people who burn cars — we are a people who build cars.”

The messaging had a familiar ring to it: politicians, Åkesson reiterated, had for too long been allowed to make Sweden “uglier, poorer and more dangerous”. It was time to take the power back. “Sweden will be good again,” was the title of the video. Not quite “make Sweden great again”, but close enough.