Swedish Politics

[Chrill]

I think Renault is looking at 2021, but that is a very very long term indeed.

Quite like Swedish politics. We had an election six weeks ago and we have no clue who won!

[Penfold]

I'm sure you'll get a Government long before Renault builds a decent engine.  Social Democrats up next, what happens if they can't form a coalition... new elections?

[Chrill]

Oh, so you actually know a bit about our situation?

Yeah, put simply in our recent elections we got a 41-40-19 split between the Red-Green Centre-Left Alliance, the Right Alliance, and the Sweden Democrats respectively.

The Right + SweDem together voted to remove Social Democats (leader of the 41% centre-left bloc) from power. Now, the speaker of the house has four attempts to suggest a prime minister. That person needs to be approved by 50% of the parliament. The 40% Right Alliance got offered to try (despite being the second largest bloc, but we'll discuss that some other time) and failed. The 41% centre-left is trying now (the Social Democrats) but will potentially fail too. The speaker has technically not offered the chance to anyone yet, the leaders of the two alliances have merely been tasked with looking into whether they can or can not form a government approved by parliament.

Had the Right + SweDem not removed the Social Democrats from power, they would have the power to call for re-election. Now that the Social Democrats are merely a caretaker government, they do not have the power to do so. We can only have a re-election once four attempts to approve a prime minister fails. We could be in for a very long period of caretaking, potentially so much so that the Social Democrats will have to finalise the 2019 national budget despite the election outcome not being certain.

[Matt]

How far right is the Swedish right-wing?

[Chrill]

Well, the Right-Wing Alliance is merely quite liberal. Lower taxes, get people working, less subsidies to people. If you're too sick to work, that sort of sucks but whatever.

The Sweden Democrats are classified as far-right, arguably further right than UKIP. Sweden Democrats stem from a neo-nazi movement and only cut their ties to that in the 1990s when current party leader had already joined. As in, the leader of the Sweden Democrats joined a neo-nazi movement. Wikipedia classifies Sweden Democrats as "Right-wing to far-right".

The Moderate Party (yeah, its their name), the largest party in the Right Alliance bloc, is this according to Wikipedia:

The Moderate Party (Swedish: Moderata samlingspartiet, commonly referred to as Moderaterna: "Moderates") is a liberal-conservative political party in Sweden. The party generally supports tax cuts, the free market, civil liberties and economic liberalism.

[Chrill]

Also, I chose to split this off from the Engine Sounds. It was slightly off-topic, was it not?

[Penfold]

Only compared to things not off-topic.

I always have an issue with this whole left/right classification because in my mind it's a division based on economics - within which parties can then be authoritarian or libertarian (to varying degrees) - but it seems that now, at least in UK media, a left/right positioning is defined almost exclusively on social attitudes.  Strikes me as odd that Marine Le Pen & Maggie Thatcher are both shoved off as right-wingers, obviously with Le Pen further to the right, when their attitudes to all things economic could scarcely be more different.

Thanks for the info. about how attempts to form a new Govt. will proceed, or quite possibly won't proceed!  How set in stone are the groupings within the two blocs?  Would it be a massive shock if, for example, the Centre Party or the Liberals (or anyone else) jumped across to the 'enemy' coalition?

[Chrill]

The only way out of this, and the only way to form a successful government, is if exactly that happened. I believe both Center and Liberals may join the Social Democrats in a new Center Alliance. Social Democrats are left-center anyway, they are not far from the other two parties on most issues.

In fairness, I'd say there is one genuinely left party. They're called "The Left Party". Clever name. There are 2 genuine right parties, that'd be the Sweden Democrats and the Christian Democrats. Center, Liberals, and Moderates are all varying degrees of Center-Right.

Left/Right in Sweden boils down to one major issue really - taxes. The left want, in general, a higher tax so that a strong governing body can care for the sick and poor. The right want, in general, low taxes and for the state to let them mind their own business. Most everyone working in healthcare or schools vote left, most everyone in private enterprises vote right.

[Matt]

https://twitter.com/johnstossel/status/1054748437676089344?s=21

Thoughts on this video? The way it?s presented, you would almost think Sweden is farther to the right economically than the US.

[Chrill]

In many regards, he is right. There are several issues with this video though:

* Our school system has deteriorated following the "Free choice" program, since we now have venture capitalists and private entities running schools for the sole purpose of profit. Sweden has seen a direct decline of average grades since this was introduced. Source: (Link to Wikipedia, with Swedish sources behind it)
* The Swedish healthcare is seeing increased queues due to privatisation. Prices are still controlled by government, so we cannot argue that privatising it has made it more expensive. In Stockholm where I live, we have a bigger choice of where to go. In smaller cities, where previously only the government offered healthcare, you now often have to travel to a nearby larger town to get healthcare because there's no money to be made on a smaller population. The same applies to pharmacies, which used to be a state-owned monopoly up until 10 years ago. I have a bigger choice of medicines and pharmacies, people in the countryside do not. In 2017, a birthing center in the small Swedish town of Solleftea (ring above the a, but the forum removes that...) was shut down. This meant parents-to-be now have to travel almost 100 kilometres (60 miles) further just to give birth. Why did this happen? The hospital in Solleftea is privately owned and the birthing center was not profitable.

I'm definitely left-leaning, so I will be defending a strong government. However, it is my belief that any system from which all of Sweden benefits (healthcare, education, retirement pensions, etc.), the government needs to have a strong presence. In any part where we do not, a free market is beneficial to all of us. Way back when, we had a government owned hamburger chain. That's absurdity right there.

In fairness, our taxes aren't that incredibly high compared to around the world. We have a progressive tax rate, I currently earn about $3500 before tax every month and my total income tax (local + national) sits at roughly 23%. In addition, the VAT for food is 12% and it's 6% for printed items (books, magazines), cultural services, and transport. It's 25% for other items (that will include cars, furniture, clothes, and so on). However, taxes do still offer a parent 480 days of parental leave, 80% of your salary during sick leave from work (including if a kid is sick and you must care of them), and a retirement fund that will see you through your final years in decency. Not to mention free education all the way up to the top level, including an actual monthly GRANT at about $350 for being a student (increases if you have kids, or if you've left a job with decent salary to go study).

[Chrill]

Well, the Social Democratic leader Stefan Lofven has also failed to form a government. So, both major parties (and thus leaders of both major coalitions) have failed. This is quite the deadlock. The speak of the house is now taking a more active role in trying to iron out potential "unholy alliances" or other unusual solutions.

[Chrill]

So, since we last spoke...

Ulf, leader of the right alliance, was voted on for Prime Minister and failed to secure the nomination. So that's another failure. We have now given the task of trying to form a government to Annie Loof, the leader of the FOURTH largest party "The Center Party". They are the second largest party in Ulf's right Alliance, but has opened up to negotiating with the Green Party and the Social Democrats in order to secure a majority of seats.

We'll see what happens, all the politicians are still rather locked in their ways. It's a silly way of doing it, really.

[Penfold]

You can't have a Prime Minister who is called A. Loof, that's just plain ridiculous!

[Chrill]

In her defence, it's the letter O with dots. It's just, this forum doesn't support anything except A-Z

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_L%C3%B6%C3%B6f

So how are you all doing with the Brexit? Realised how poor an idea it is yet?

[Chrill]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/world/europe/sweden-government.html
Huzzah we made it.