The Swedish general election on Sunday looks set to see the nationalist Swedish Democrats, who are members of the same European Parliament grouping as the Polish ruling party PiS and Vox of Spain, become the second largest party. They would then overtake the centre right Moderate Party and make the formation of a new government very interesting indeed if the left led by the Social Democrats loses its current majority.
Seat projections based on the recent polling would still see the Social Democrats return as the largest party with perhaps even two more seats than it currently has despite its popularity slipping consistently over the last few months. It has also been predicted that on current showings that the Swedish Democrats will gain 8 seats while the Moderates will lose nine.
A key factor in determining whether the left remains in power will be how well the Green Party perform on Sunday. They currently hold 16 seats, but in several polls conducted over the past year they were polling at less than 4% which is the minimum which contesting parties must surpass if they are to take seats in the Riksdag.
If the left does not retain its fragile majority, which is also dependent on the far-left that currently has 21 seats, then the question will be whether the other parties of the right will coalesce to elect a government led by Swedish Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson. The fact that this is even a possibility demonstrates the vastly increased support for the nationalist right which in the past twenty years has seen its vote share soar from 1.4% to a projected 20% in Sunday’s general election.
What is striking about the rise of the Swedish Democrats, and what particularly annoys the Swedish left and haunts the left in other European countries – including Ireland as evidenced by the hysterical “for roysh” industry – is that the increase in the vote for a party that demands immigration controls directly mirrors the decline of the Social Democratic party and the failure of the far left to replace it.
A poll conducted by Swedish television in 2018 showed that while the Social Democrats still took 34% of traditional working class votes, 24% of “blue collar” workers voted for the Swedish Democrats, well above its overall vote of 17.5%.
In contrast, the socialists took 27% of the votes of white collar employees and managers compared to just 12% for the Swedish Democrats.
The Social Democrats are currently at 29% in opinion polls, which is over 10% less than the party received in 2002 prior to the Swedish Democrats beginning to make inroads among working Swedes concerned at the impact of mass immigration on their society. That impact has been evidenced in increasing crime especially as reflected in the numbers of sexual assaults by immigrants, and recent concerns over immigrant gang violence.
The number of murders so far in Sweden in 2022 has already surpassed the total for the 12 months of 2021. Even the ultra-liberal Social Democrats have been forced to recognise the connection between unrestricted immigration and a lenient punitive system. Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson recently admitted that “too much immigration and too little integration” was a cause of gang crime.
The Swedish Democrats have made it clear that they will only negotiate with other parties which accept its policies on immigration and crime. The fact that the other main conservative grouping, the Moderate Party, has adopted many of the Swedish Democrats’ policies in an attempt to shore up its own vote, is proof of how far Swedish politics have developed since 2018 when they were stating that they would never co-operate with Akesson’s party.
The Socialists too have been forced to shift “to the right” under pressure from their own support base, but are caught in a bit of a bind, as their shrinking traditional base has made them more dependent on the votes of immigrants. In 2018, a massive 47% voters who had been “raised outside Europe” voted for the Socialists.
It is a Faustian pact that other parties of the left and indeed centre right have made in other European countries. Those familiar with Goethe’s great drama will know what happens when the Devil as Mephistopheles comes to claim his part of the bargain. For those of you who are not, eternal enslavement was the vig.