A.N And here is the promised Sweden update, which is dedicated to @KingSweden24, who helped me through both its creation and offered me .some great advice on it. It has a few minor retconns which I will fix in the TL at a later point, but I wanted to get this update out this week, so hope you enjoy!
Swedish politics has been dominated by the presence of Olof Palme and continues to do so to the present day. Along with being one of Sweden’s longest serving premiers at 14 years (only his mentor and predecessor Tage Erlander served longer than him), Palme was widely regarded as a titan of the Social Democratic party and movement along with being both highly charismatic and a visionary to boot.
Serving for most of the 1980s, Palme’s government largely continued and promoted the Swedish “Third Way”, harnessing social democracy to achieve more equitable . Palme, ever prescient of political trends, largely outmanoeuvred the nascent Green movement during his term in office. Beginning the process of winding down nuclear power, bringing in stringent environmental targets and introducing the first carbon tax in 1989 went a long way to blunting the appeal of the Green Party.
However, Palme, was fallible. As the Swedish economy entered a significant and sustained period of negative growth beginning in 1990s, painful cuts to the welfare state were required to balance the budget. Years in office and at the head of the Social Democratic Party, meant that Palme began to employ a macro-management approach to his Cabinet and allowed significant delegation to his more right-wing Finance Minister Kjell-Olof Feldt.
It soon became clear by the turn of the Nineties, the effects of Palme’s old age began to weigh on the PM. Admitting at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) conference he was spending more of his time focusing on “his family and his future”, was the starting gun for succession preparations.
Almost immediately after this conference, Palme faced down a parliamentary and government crisis with the 1990 budget. Feldt’s threat of resignation if he couldn’t implement his policies, continual squabbling between him and many other Social Democrats and a gentle suggestion from his wife, set Palme’s mind. Shortly after the budget crisis’ resolution (largely in Feldt’s favour) Palme announced that he was resigning as both PM and Social Democrat leader and a new leader would be chosen by May 1990.
Feldt enters the race as the frontrunner, after Ignvar Carlsson chooses to sit out hoping for a plum job in the next Cabinet. Feldt’s leadership campaign seems unstoppable until the leftists within the Social Democrats rally behind the environment minister Birgitta Dahl. Dahl, who has a successful track record in government and gets Palme’s unofficial nod, means that the coronation turns into a slug-match. Battling for endorsements, union support and votes, a brutal Congress followed which sees Feldt narrowly take the crown.
The bad-blood from the leadership election, and a general lack of fresh talent for the Social Democrats sees the party goes into the Nineties divided and without a tranche of ambitious and well-groomed politicos. Largely as a result of the rise of the “Unionist Left”, an unholy yet massive amalgamation of leftists Social Democrats, Greens, Communists and disenchanted and radical union members, Feldt loses goodwill in the Riksdag and becomes bracketed by divisions.
However, it was under Feldt that neo-liberalism became the agenda of the Social Democrats. Significant reductions in both the welfare state and government expenditure followed and all its leaders after Feldt would often embrace such economically liberal positions.
It was clear from the onset of Feldt’s election as PM that 1991 was going to be a difficult election. Feldt, the Finance Minister since 1982 and then the Prime Minister was easy to blame for both the recession. Social Democrats had been in power for a generation. Feldt wasn’t Palme and Palme’s continual sniping from the sidelines did little to generate goodwill within the Social Democrats. Further, Bildt had managed to capture the imagination of voters and was widely liked. 1991 saw the right win an absolute majority (counting the Moderates, Liberals and Christian Democrats as the right) in the Riksdag and was more than enough to make Bildt PM.
Bildt’s term as Prime Minister was, similar to Falladin’s government in the late 1980s, unstable. Whilst the party (and the centre-right) had a more stable majority in the Riksdag, the political circumstances surrounding his government remained difficult. Without the restraint of Feldt, Bildt’s programme of liberalisations proved a massive shock to the system and such moves led to significant economic and political turbulence. The Social Democrats, now led by the young dynamo Mona Sahlin, is able to damage Bildt and his policies and moves past its own internal squabbling.
Of particular concern to the political establishment was the morphing of the “New Democracy” party, which had entered the Riksdag in 1991 as a populist outfit. The rise of the Islamophobic Vivianne Franzén within the party and the resignation of the party’s co-founder in 1993 meant that by 1994, a far-right party was propping up the government. Bildt recognised this threat, but proved either unwilling or unable to end his government’s reliance on ND.
However, Bildt’s greatest failure would be with the economy. His prescription failed and soon he began looking to Europe for a solution. Coinciding with the fall of the Soviet Union, Sweden (now more economically aligned to Europe and its liberal economic principles) actively begins to consider EU membership, which Bildt and his cabinet fully endorse. Bildt, in one of his final pieces of work as PM, organizes a referendum on Europe membership in 1994.
The 1994 election was supposed to be a decade-defining election which would cut through the turmoil and deliver a clear result either for the left or for the right. In fact, the election only magnified the chaos both economic and political within Sweden. As expected the Moderates lost a significant chunk of the vote and Riksdag seats, with Bildt having soured on the public and his party (ironically) losing moderate voters on issues like Europe and ND’s presence in Parliament.
However, the biggest loser of the election would be Sahlin’s Social Democrats. Sahlin struggled on the campaign trail far more expected, was widely seen as under-qualified to be PM and was sensationally was placed under investigation by Sweden’s National Anti-Corruption Unit after several allegations of impropriety, a week before the election. In a time of economic stagnation, such allegations, explosive in regular times, derailed Sahlin and the Social Democrats. As such, the smaller parties on both the left, right make significant gains, including worryingly the ND’s, despite all parties refusing to work with the “morphed” party in the new Riksdag.
Bildt and Sahlin, both politically damaged, heavily complicated the government negotiations which followed in 1994. Bildt, who’s Moderates had taken a body-blow proved unable to rally the smaller right-wing parties behind a minority government, whilst Sahlin herself was unable to get the support of the Unionist Left, Centre and even her own party to become PM. Sahlin resigned as leader a few weeks into the government negotiations, recognising her position was untenable.
Calls for a “government of national unity” led by either a technocrat or by Centre member Karin Söder, who was undergoing cancer treatment at the time, entered the discourse, but it seemed as if an early election would be the only device able to break the deadlock.
Only through the support of the now leaderless Social Democrats, is a “unity government” headed by Bengt Westerberg is formed. Westerberg, popular with voters and the leader of the third largest party, the Liberal People’s Party, corrals a government together with Social Democrat and Centre support.
As such this “unity government” begins preparing for the upcoming EU accession referendum scheduled for November, with Westerberg proving a particularly passionate and effective campaigner in favour of ascension. With the economic turmoil and recession of the past years, many Swedes accept that a significant change is required and the EU offers this change. Whilst 54% of Swedes backing EU membership, Westerberg’s government lurches into even deeper crisis.
This crisis stemmed from the Centre Party, rankled by and in the government. Issues with the construction of the Øresund Bridge from Malmø to Copenhagen, right-wing voters deserting the party with its presence in a left-wing government and the general instability of Söder’s leadership all negatively affect the party’s poll ratings. The inaugural European Parliament election sees Centre fail to win a single seat, a catastrophic result for once of the largest parties in Sweden. Such a result sees the incumbent leader, Karin Söder finally resign as leader and is replaced by the more right wing and combative Maud Olofsson.
Olofsson, in October 1995, announces that she will withdraw Centre’s support from the government and pledges support for s new government led by the newly elected Moderate party leader Per Westerberg (no relation to Bengt). Now with a minority, Westerberg saw the vultures circling. What followed was a short and sharp and successful no confidence motion, with Westerberg deposed as both PM and later as the Liberal People’s leader next year.
Perrson, who had taken over the Social Democrats after Sahlin’s resignation, has spent his time as a junior member of Westerberg’s government reaching out to the United Left and splinters and trying to corral support. Perrson, was thus able to form a minority government with United Left support as the right bickered amongst itself. However, with the challenges and political instability of the last 6 years, Persson government largely acted as a placeholder and Persson himself recognised the need for a snap election to renew his mandate.
The 1996 election sees the United Left wiped out, with the splinters and splits seen since the EU referendum and joining Persson’s government decimating the party’s ranks. This meant that even as the Social Democrats made marginal gains, the government was doomed. A concerning trend continued with the rise of New Democracy, which had gone from strength-to-strength with the rising islamophobia seen since the Noël Attack and acted as a significant problem for the Riksdag to functional government. Per Westerberg, the leader of the Moderates was thus the only possible figure to be able to become PM.
With New Democracy a thorn in the side of all parties, (the right has a plurality in the Riksdag, even despite the ND continuing to maintain its ground) Per Westerberg becomes PM with an informal agreement between the Moderates and Social Democrats to isolate the ND’s within the Riksdag.
After the years of political chaos and economic turbulence, Westerberg is seen as a return to normal. As the economy finally improves with inflation finally easing and budget deficits reducing, means that austerity can be eased. As Westerberg positions himself as cosmopolitan elite, but his decision (along with all his fellow Scandinavian colleagues) to reject membership of the ecuzone is seen as a political masterstroke, and allows for the euroskeptic nation to maintain its distance from Europe and retain significant economic independence. Westerberg, more than any of his other predecessors since Palme, benefits from good luck and manages to win a squeaker of a re-election in 2000, with Persson finally forced out as the Social Democrats leader. With this re-election (regardless of the photo-finish) Westerberg goes on to become the most electorally successful centre-right Prime Minister in Sweden since WWII and seemed, at least in the early 2000s, to have ushered in the end of the Social Democrats hegemony.
Four defeats on the trot for the Social Democrats leaves the party consumed by a semi-perpetual state of chaos and recriminations. In a final roll of the dice, the party choose the fresh faced and the relatively inexperienced Margot Wallström to be its new leader. However Wallström, unlike Sahlin before her, proves a far more capable campaigner and she becomes a global figure of well renown, with glitzy interviews and spreads from Vogue, Time and the Economist lauding her and her policies.
As the "
Wallström-wave" sweeps Sweden in 2004, the Social Democrats and her fellow left-wing parties enter government with a significant mandate. Offering a compassionate middle ground between the social democracy and capitalism, Wallström is undeniably a much needed breathe of fresh air for Swedish politics.
Despite this, pundits and members of parliament now see, with in January 2005, the ecu becoming legal tender across Europe, the remainder of the decade in Swedish politics will still be defined by the never-ending debate on Europe. Wallström promise of change may soon fall to the time and tested arguments over Europe. Whether the new PM can cement Sweden's place within the bloc is, however, another question.
