The far right has no portfolio in this new government. But it is she, with her 73 deputies, who is in charge. Now the leading political force on the right (since the September elections), she voted as one man on Monday October 17 to support the new cabinet led by the conservative Ulf Kristersson. The Yes won by 176 votes for (and 173 votes against). All right on one side. All the left of the other.
The Democrats of Sweden, the name of this far-right party, indeed made an agreement on Friday, October 14, with the three other right-wing parties. They do not enter the government but they will participate in all the decisions, in the preparation of all the bills, in the choice of all the presidents of the commission. And this, specifies the agreement, with “full and equal influence” to the other three formations. They will even be involved in an “interior cabinet” of the coalition, a sort of parallel government. They therefore do not have ministerial portfolios but they are in charge.
And above all, the far right has imposed its political choices: the agreement signed on Friday gives pride of place to its program. On immigration, the number of refugees welcomed each year in Sweden will drop from 6,400 to 900 (seven times less). Family reunification will be tightened, access to Swedish citizenship restricted. On the climate, ambitions are revised downwards, energy taxes will decrease. On the fight against delinquency, the police will be able, in certain areas, to carry out searches without prior authorization, and a national ban on begging is envisaged. For the leader of the far right, it’s full board. “With this agreementExplain Jimmie Akesson, it will be our party policy, on crime, our party policy on immigration. This is a new direction for Sweden.” The fact is that it is a revolution in this country of moderate tradition: not only has the “republican cordon” completely disappeared around the far right, but above all its ideas are triumphing.
Nevertheless, it is not certain that this agreement holds. The majority hangs by a thread: three seats apart. The two center-right parties of the new ruling coalition, the Christian Democrats and especially the Liberals, risk finding the bill a little steep, particularly on social issues, immigration and begging. The Swedish press today stresses how comfortable the position of the extreme right is: it plays the puppeteer without being in government, and therefore without having to pay for the possible unpopularity of certain measures. The three other right-wing parties risk, in the long term, finding this compromise quite unbalanced.