Election Results Are Culmination of a Nasty Right-Wing Campaign

The election result is the shocking culmination of the most right-wing election campaign in modern times, characterised by a succession of racist outbursts. The stock market greeted the election result with a surge on Monday, with the share prices of healthcare companies and the Charter Schools (“Free schools" owned by for-profit companies but state-funded), rising particularly sharply.

Even if the Swedish Democrats do not join the new right-wing government, it will be more explicitly racist than previous governments formed by the traditional right. The pledge of the “blue-brown” bloc (made up the Moderates, Christian Democrats, Liberals and Swedish Democrats) “to bring order to Sweden” is a declaration of war against low-wage workers, refugees and the suburbs.

On the horizon are brutal right-wing policies that attempt to pass the costs of the fast-approaching capitalist crisis on to the working class.

The election has continued to redraw the political map — to the right — of the formation of the blue-brown bloc, followed by the Moderates becoming a copy of the Swedish Democrats, now the country’s second largest party.

When Moderate leader Ulf Kristersson launched the party’s election campaign, it was with a long tribute to the racism of the Swedish Democrats.

"No other party has warned like the Sweden Democrats that Sweden cannot accept so many immigrants” Kristersson said at the party’s election kick-off in early August.

After the Moderates copied the Swedish Democrats, even more of their voters went over to the original source and voted for the latter. In 19 of the country’s municipalities, the Swedish Democrats are now the largest party and in almost all parts of the country the racist party has increased its support.

That the blue-brown threat could not be repelled risks fuelling further despondency and pessimism about the prospects of struggle. Union leaders and employers will try to exploit this sentiment to quickly conclude new agreements unless a movement from below is formed to make up for this year’s dramatic real wage losses.

But the escalation of the tough on crime “baton” policy, the rearmament of the hard core of the state — police and military, control and surveillance — together with racism and the attacks that await as the government tries to pass on the costs of the capitalist crisis to the working class will breed a backlash and a will to “speak out”.

The right-wing reaction that the election represents writes the beginning of a new chapter in the country’s modern history. However, the moods and political confusion expressed by the election results are not set in stone. The shift in opinion reflected in the election results is no more permanent than any other wind of opinion. What is permanent, however, is the polarisation represented by the election — what Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan described on the day after the election as: “Weak governance. Divided country”.

Today’s mood should be seen against the background of first the pandemic and then the Ukraine war, which has prolonged an already unusually lengthy period of lull in the struggle. Add to this the betrayal and capitulation of the trade union leadership and the growing vacuum on the political left.

The picture is not one-sided. There are major differences between the parliamentary elections and the municipal and regional elections. There are also big differences in how men and women voted in the parliamentary elections:

“In TV4’s own election day survey, the differences between how men and women voted are very large. If the latter have their say, Magdalena Andersson will be the obvious choice for prime minister, as the S-side (the so-called red-greens) will garner a whopping 61.2% of the vote — compared to 40.2% when men have their say” (TV4 Election Day, 11 September).

In the big cities, the election results are the exact opposite of the rest of the country and the Left Party has made strong progress; in Uppsala, the Left Party has had its best election ever and in Gothenburg, they were close to becoming the second largest party.

It looks like the right-wing is losing power in the country’s three largest regions — Stockholm after 16 years of right-wing rule, Västra Götaland and Skåne — and in the city of Stockholm and the municipality of Gothenburg. In Stockholm, the SD did not advance at all and in Malmö it went back for the first time in 20 years.

So, the conditions are there to build resistance.

The parties likely to be part of the right-wing government to be formed — Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals (although it is unclear whether the latter will be allowed in the next government) — are all among the election losers. The Moderates have had their worst election since 2002 and in Stockholm since the 1970s, partly as a result of their cooperation with the Swedish Democrats. The Moderates are not the only ones that have been punished for their cooperation with the Swedish Democrats: the Liberals have had their worst election in over 100 years and look set to lose their seats in seven regions.

It is on the dictates of Swedish Democrats that a new Moderate-led government can be formed and govern. The Swedish Democrat racists have the final say whether in government or not. The new government that the Moderate leader wants to form will be a reactionary crisis government from the outset, which only has its counterpart in the anti-labour governments that ruled the country a hundred years ago, during the crisis years of the 1920s. It will not be long before new government crises.

The elections have exacerbated the political crisis and, in the long term, opened the way for a variety of government constellations and for one or two of the traditional right-wing parties to collapse like the houses of cards they are.

The threat from the blue-browns boosted support for the Social Democrats in the final stages of the election campaign, but the party’s result in the parliamentary elections (30.5%) is the third worst since universal suffrage was introduced more than 100 years ago.

In the old stronghold of Västernorrland in the north, the party’s decline continued due to health care cuts and the coalition with the Moderates in the region.

The rise of the Social Democrats, from a historically low level, also seems to have come at the expense of the two partner parties, the Centre Party and the Left Party, according to SVT’s election survey. Both went down compared to the 2018 parliamentary elections and Annie Lööf has announced that she is stepping down as leader of the Centre Party.

The fact that the Green Party did not go down is probably due to a lot of support votes for the party, as it did much worse in the regional and municipal elections than in the parliamentary elections.

The Social Democrats’ right-wing policies of the last four years, together with the election campaign’s incitement against the suburbs and the message of a tough on crime “baton” policy, not only contributed to further legitimising the Swedish Democrats, but became a direct obstacle to mobilising against the blue-brown threat.

Therefore, this year’s elections were not a repeat of 2018, when the will to stop the Swedish Democrats decided the elections in favour of the Social Democrats and the cooperation parties. Then, the turnout was also the highest since 1985 (just over 87%), compared to a preliminary 83% in this year’s elections.

Almost a year ago, Magdalena Andersson was elected as the new leader of the Social Democrats, after Stefan Löfven had thrown in the towel, and after various government crises she was also able to form a new Social Democrat government at the end of last year.

When she was elected, the Social Democrats signalled a partially new political course; the “baton”policy would be combined with welfare investments, profiteering would be limited, market schools would be abolished and the growing inequalities would be combated with, among other things, increased taxation of capital.

The fact that the new leader felt compelled to sound more left-wing at the time was due to the pressure the Social Democrats were under after the fight against market rents succeeded in bringing down both the government and the January agreement in 2021.

In their attempts to emulate the blue-brown parties, the Social Democrats ensured that the election campaign was decoupled from the inequalities of class society

The successful fight against market rents put social issues on the agenda, and the Left Party finally putting its heels on the ground gave the party record poll numbers — 13.3% in the SVT/Novus July 2021 voter survey — and thousands of new members.

But the Left Party leadership did not build on the momentum the struggle had provided, but became even more intent on being part of a Social Democrat-led government, which it made clear by not continuing the fight for a new social housing policy as well as Cement company, allowing Cementa to continue mining limestone in Slite on Gotland in November 2021.

The Left Party leadership’s line weakened the pressure from the left that emerged through the fight against market rent, The leadership of the Social Democrats then used this opportunity to follow Danish Social Democracy even more in the rightward track.

Instead of the left turn that Magdalena Andersson had talked about last year, a Social Democratic government decided, with the help of shock doctrine, to take Sweden into NATO, not least at the expense of the Kurds, after having fallen flat on its face to Turkey’s dictatorial regime.

Then, when the election campaign began, the tone was set by Integration Minister Anders Ygeman, who wanted to import the racist so-called ghetto laws that have been introduced in Denmark. Something that even the Sweden Democrats have not dared to propose.

According to the integration minister, no more than half of those with “non-Nordic background” will be allowed to live in the 61 housing areas classified as vulnerable by the police.

“It is a policy not for integration, but for disintegration (...) It is disgusting”, as Petter Larsson commented in Aftonbladet. This was then followed by Magdalena Andersson’s statement that “We (the Social Democrats) don’t want Chinatown in Sweden, we don’t want Somalitown or Little Italy” as part of the flirtation with the racist currents that exist.

Despite this, Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar was not prepared to draw any red lines against the Social Democrats and its rightwing policy in the election campaign, nor on the NATO issue. But more than ever, a left is needed that is prepared to be a real opposition to all forms of right-wing politics.

The low profile meant that this year’s parliamentary elections were a disappointment for the Left Party, which fell from 8 percent in 2018 to 6.7 percent.

In their attempts to emulate the blue and brown, the Social Democrats ensured that the election campaign was decoupled from the inequalities of class society. Instead of social issues, welfare, the sharp rises in food prices, the crisis of capitalism and the climate, the issues of the right dominated.

“We won the debate,” writes the blue-brown megaphone Dagens Industri (DI) in an editorial, only to admit that there was little debate. The truth is that the Social Democrats and, for example, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) and its affiliated trade unions did not challenge the racism of the blue-browns in any debate, let alone on the streets.

“Magdalena Andersson (the Social democratic leader) usually says that she sees reality as it is. She might as well say that she now sees the right’s proposals and makes them her own, one after the other. This year she is governing for the third time on the right’s budget without blinking an eye. ‘I agree with Ulf’ (the leader of the traditional rightwing party the Moderates) was her most common line in the election debates,” writes DI, adding: “But she goes further than that. She has swiftly appropriated the flag, the love of country, private motoring and wolf hunting.”

The longer the election campaign went on, the worse the blue-browns’ hatred of the suburbs and the competition to see which party could go furthest in its racism and attacks on immigrants.

There is also a competition between the blue-brown parties to see who could build the highest refugee walls, cut aid the most and build the most nuclear reactors.

The Moderates, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals all want to worsen health and unemployment insurance to widen the low-wage market. And the Swedish Democrats have said they are prepared to talk to the Moderates about cutting unemployment benefits.

The right-wing bloc, in particular the Moderates, Christain Democrats and Swedish Democrats, also wants to cut back on the already inadequate efforts to save the environment and nature. Likewise, they want to cut public service and cultural funding.

To what extent the crisis will force the next government to also seek support from the Social Democrats and other parties remains to be seen. Although the election result may have temporarily closed the door to “broad solutions across block boundaries”, the crisis and the growing divisions in society tend to force the ruling elite to hide behind “consensus for the good of the nation”.

“The worst crisis in 40 years is just around the corner,” writes Dagens Nyheter’s economic commentator Carl Johan von Seth on 12 September, adding:

"The crisis is spelled stagflation: a combination of high inflation, rising unemployment and a worsening economy (...) During the pandemic, it became a habit to spend extraordinary budgets with billions on households and businesses. But with the situation as it is now, the subsidies risk becoming a stimulus injection that the Riksbank will have to try to drain from the economy. It will be a bit like Ebba Grön sings in staten & kapitalet (The State and Capital): the government raises the electricity price compensation, the Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank) the rate."

“Wage formation will also be squeezed. Who will be happy with wage agreements that give 3% when food becomes 20% more expensive? For the next finance minister, therefore, not only worse times await, but a more conflict-ridden and difficult economic landscape.”

Without a response to the crisis, and in order to salvage power if possible, the blue-browns will increasingly lean on racism, underlining the importance of quickly trying to build a resistance from below and rally those who want to fight.

If you want to organise for workers’ politics and socialism, against racism, sexism, capitalism and right-wing politics — contact Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna, ISA in Sweden.