The Swedish right completely normalizes the far-right and opens the door for it to form a government

BarcelonaThere are still five months until the elections in Sweden, but the electoral machinery has already started to get underway. And this week there has been a relevant announcement that definitively breaks a historical taboo in the country. The leader of the conservative party (Moderate Party) and current prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has made it even clearer that the far-right party Sweden Democrats is now considered as legitimate a partner as any other and will be part of the next government if the right-wing bloc wins. He announced this at a press conference accompanied by the leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, who for the first time sees a real option for his party to have responsibilities at the highest level.

"After the elections, we will form a four-party majority government," Kristersson said. The current government coalition is made up of moderates, Christian democrats, and liberals. For the next four years, the right-wing bloc's goal is to also include the Sweden Democrats (SD, for their Swedish acronym), a far-right populist and xenophobic party. Kristersson, however, made it clear that he will be the candidate for prime minister. In this way, the conservative leader offers ministries to the far-right in exchange for securing his position if his bloc wins, regardless of which party receives the most votes.

Political fragmentation has for years meant that the only solution for governing in Sweden is to form coalitions or govern in minority with the support of external partners. In the last elections, the Sweden Democrats managed for the first time to overtake sorpasso the Moderate Party and became the second strongest force in Parliament, only behind the social democrats. Now, polls predict the same scenario, although, for the moment, they place the center-left bloc ahead.

"Although it has been clear for a long time that Jimmie Åkesson has no chance of gaining parliamentary support to become prime minister, this has served as a bargaining chip," explains Tomas Ramberg, political analyst for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter Tomas Ramberg. "Åkesson has reserved the right to raise this issue for negotiation after the elections if the Sweden Democrats remain ahead of the moderates," he argues.

Sweden Democrats is a party with neo-Nazi origins and still has several members linked to far-right groups. Since Åkesson became party leader in 2005, he has promoted a more moderate image of the party, although it continues to base its discourse on the criminalization of immigrants, whom it points to as the source of all problems and as a threat to the Swedish welfare state.

Radical change of stance

The so-called sanitary cordon was already broken four years ago during the negotiations to form the current government: during this legislature, Democrats of Sweden has not been a formal partner of the government coalition, but it has had a very significant influence on the executive, especially regarding the hardening of migratory policies. At that time, the liberals' refusal to allow the SD to enter the executive was key. Now, this party – increasingly minority – has also given in. In fact, the liberals' announcement that they would accept being part of a government that also includes the far-right, three weeks ago, represented a more significant political change than this week's. "After the liberals' brave decision, the parliamentary conditions have changed on our political side," Kristersson admitted at the press conference.

The Swedish prime minister's statements this week represent a radical change from his early discourse. In 2017, when Kristersson had just been elected leader of the conservative party, he assured: "We will not have any conversation or negotiation or anything with Democrats of Sweden. I don't think it's that complicated." At that time, a government with the far-right was unthinkable. On Wednesday, he even dared to talk about specific ministries: "We both consider it natural that a party that has dedicated so much effort to migration policies should be specifically responsible for this portfolio".