Sweden faces ‘chaos’ after election ends in deadlock

SWEDEN’S mainstream political parties must engage with the hard-right Sweden Democrats if they want to have any hope of a stable government in the next four years, the party’s leader claimed yesterday.

The warning came as the anti-immigration party found itself as potential kingmaker after making gains in last weekend’s inconclusive general election, which has left the country facing months of “chaos” and horse-trading.

“He who understands first that he can talk to me will have the easiest time building a government and leading this country,” said Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democrats.

However, both of Sweden’s mainstream political groups have ruled out forming a coalition with Mr Akesson’s party, which has white supremacist roots but has cleaned up its image to capitalise on rising anti-immigration sentiment.

Sunday’s general election was the first since Sweden took in a record 163,000 refugees in 2015 – the highest per capita of any European country.

Mr Akessson’s party increased its vote share by almost five per cent from the previous election in 2014 to secure a projected 62 seats. The gains meant that both Sweden’s two main political groupings fell well short of the 175 needed to form a government.

Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s Social Democratic prime minister, said he would seek to remain in power as the leader of the largest party, and invited the opposition Alliance bloc to break the deadlock in some form of grand coalition.

Telling his supporters that “a party with roots in Nazism” would “never, ever offer anything responsible but hatred”, Mr Lofven said that mainstream parties had a “moral responsibility” to work together.

The four-party opposition Alliance, which has just one seat fewer that Mr Lofven’s bloc, rejected the overture. “This government has had its chance. It has to resign,” said Ulf Kristersson, the Alliance opposition leader.

With the Social Democrats winning only 28.4 per cent of votes – down 2.6 points from 2014, and their worst score in a century – experts said that Mr Lofven’s position remains weak.

Even the party’s parliamentary group leader, Anders Ygeman, conceded that forming a government could now take “weeks, months”. The Swedish tabloid Expressen headlined its front page yesterday: “Chaos”.

Experts said moderate parties still hold the key to coalition. “If the redgreen bloc is bigger, the Centre and the Liberals hold the key and not Jimmie Akesson,” said Mikael Gilliam, of the University of Gothenburg.

Despite the prospect of instability, the result was seen positively by the European Union despite the Sweden Democrats falling far short of a pre-poll peak of 25 per cent of the vote.

European leaders welcomed the result as a relative victory, implicitly predicting that it would not open the door to the kind of hard-right populist governments seen in Austria or Italy.

“We are confident that the government that will emerge will continue with Sweden’s strong commitment to the European Union,” said the European Commission’s chief spokesman.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator and leader of the EU’S liberal ALDE parliamentary group, said the Brexit travails of the British government had reduced the appeal of parties, like the Sweden Democrats, that advocated leaving the EU.

“Fortunately, we have Brexit. It has also provoked a resurrection of attachment to the EU within public opinion,” he told Ouest France newspaper.