Far-right party on course to be Sweden’s biggest political force
THE far-right Sweden Democrats party is within a hair’s breadth of becoming the country’s biggest political force as it uses the five towns where it won breakthrough success in the last election to mount a series of un-pc political stunts.
In an interview last week, Jimmie Åkesson, the party’s charismatic leader, put his party’s fortunes down to the “Sölvesborg effect”, named after the municipality where Louise Erixon, his fiancée, is mayor. Referring to the town, he told a Swedish newspaper: “A lot of people see what we do when we have the chance to govern, and they appreciate what they see.”
In Sölvesborg, the party has moved to stop flying the rainbow flag to celebrate Stockholm’s gay pride festival, has promised to stop purchasing “provocative, challenging” public art, and has banned children from wearing Islamic headdress.
While symbolic, the policies have garnered huge national media attention. Gitte Ørskou, the head of Stockholm’s main modern art gallery, compared the party’s art policy to Germany in the Thirties, when the Third Reich outlawed what it termed “degenerate art”.
Sofia Lenninger, the head of Sölvesborg’s culture department, was sacked for opposing the new policy.
Defending the move, Ms Erixon said: “There’s a big division between what the general public thinks is beautiful and interesting and what a tiny cultural elite thinks is exciting.”
Anders Sannerstedt, of Lund University, said: “What happens in Sölvesborg is not random. I think it is fair to assume that there is a national strategy behind it.”
It is clearly working. Polls by Ipsos and Demoskop last month estimated the ruling Social Democrats’ lead at one percentage point and 0.2 percentage points respectively, putting the Sweden Democrats on a trajectory to overtake them as early as this month.
If that happens, it would underscore the success of Mr Åkesson in transforming an openly racist, fringe party of 14 years ago into a “people’s movement” that is palatable enough to win the support of close to one in four voters.
He is now seeking to position himself as the true leader of the opposition. “The other big opposition parties have followed us on the big issues – migration, crime, energy politics,” he told Aftonbladet, a Swedish daily tabloid.
In an interview with the Expressen, Mr Åkesson said he was “as ready as I’ll ever be” to become prime minister.
After coming third with 17.5 per cent in September’s election, the Sweden Democrats have the support of 22.9 per cent of voters, according to a poll last month.
Ebba Busch Thor, leader of the Christian Democrats, joined Mr Åkesson for a working lunch in the Swedish parliament in July – a move that was seen as marking the end of the cordon sanitaire around the party.
“This isolation is really broken,” said Ewa Stenberg, a political commentator for the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. “And that means something for the voters, too: if you can talk to this party, then maybe you can vote for them as well.”