Nightmare for Brussels as Swedes turn to far-Right
Former fascist party poised to hold balance of power in poll shock
SWEDISH voters turned their backs on more than century of socialist rule last night, leaving a far-right party potentially holding the balance of power.
The anti-immigration, anti-Brussels Sweden Democrats – which has its roots in a 1990s white supremacist party – won more than one in six votes.
The party, led by charismatic former web designer and self-confessed online gambling addict Jimmie Akesson, 39, secured 17.6 per cent of the votes in the election – up from 12.9 per cent four years ago.
During his campaign, Mr Akesson said he would fight to take Sweden out of the European Union unless Brussels granted the country major concessions – of the type denied to Britain in David Cameron’s renegotiation of terms in 2016.
Yesterday’s result therefore increases the chances of Sweden becoming the second country to leave the EU –dubbed ‘Swexit’ – after Britain departs in March.
‘We increase our seats in parliament and we see that we will gain huge influence over what happens in Sweden during the coming weeks, months and years,’ Mr Akesson told a party rally.
Neither of the two main alliances in the country won a majority. With most votes counted last night, the left-wing Social Democrats – in power for the vast majority of the country’s history since the 1930s – won 28.3 per cent of the vote, down 2.8 per cent on 2014.
With its three coalition allies, the leftist bloc was marginally ahead of the centre-right Alliance coalition with a projected 40.6 per cent. Mr Akesson said he was prepared to enter coalition discussions with other parties.
Due to its origins in the fascist ‘Keep Sweden Swedish’ movement, the controversial Swedish Democrats have until now been treated as a pariah by other blocs in the country’s system of coalition government.
Sweden’s swing to the right represented a blow to the country’s traditional left-leaning politics.
The make-up of the next government now hangs on coalition negotiations of a type unseen in modern Swedish history – meaning the outcome is impossible to predict. With both coalitions neckand-neck, a deal could take weeks to strike, if at all. During a bitter campaign, Mr Akesson blamed the former government led by the Social Democrats’ Stefan Lofven for ‘prioritising’ the rights of asylum seekers over native Swedes. The country allowed in Europe’s highest number of refugees per capita during the 2015 migrant crisis – 163,000 in a nation of 10 million – and a total of 400,000 since 2012. ‘The government we have had now, they have prioritised asylum seekers,’ Mr Akesson said during one of his final rallies on Saturday. ‘Sweden needs breathing space. We need tight, responsible immigration policies.’ Mr Akesson’s party has described asylum seekers as a threat to Swedish culture and claimed the new arrivals are placing an impossible strain on the country’s welfare system. In 2009, Mr Akesson wrote an article which described Islam as ‘our greatest external threat since World War II’. Socialists have dominated every election in Sweden for the last 101 years, leading to the country’s status as a totem among leftists across Europe and beyond. As voting began yesterday outgoing Prime Minister Mr Lofven condemned the ‘ hateful forces’ behind the swing to the right, and urged voters to ‘stand on the right side of history’.