Hej,

Jimmie Åkesson told a conference of some 800 Sweden Democrats in Karlstad over the weekend that he wants his anti-immigration party to challenge the Social Democrats for the spot of Sweden’s largest party.

It could happen.

The Social Democrats have been Sweden’s largest party throughout modern political history, even when they’ve lost elections, but their support has dwindled from the 50 percent of their social movement heyday of the mid-20th century to the 30 percent-ish of today.

The Sweden Democrats, meanwhile, have grown from being an outcast faction started by neo-Nazi sympathisers, to 20 seats in parliament in the 2010 election, to their 73 seats in parliament today. In the 2022 election they overtook the conservative Moderates to become Sweden’s second-largest party, and now they’ve got their eyes on the top spot.

I remember interviewing a Swede back in 2017 who went undercover for a year with the US alt-right movement, and one of his quotes stuck with me. “They’re not just doing political campaigning (…) but they organise barbecues and picnics, go to gallery openings, concerts, and just have a beer in a pub. (…) I think many of the people there are there for social reasons. It provides a context for them as friends,” he told me.

There’s a similar feel whenever you read reports from Sweden Democrat events or their presence in local politics. It’s a social glue that used to be provided by the Social Democrats and to some extent other parties.

If the mainstream parties wanted to draw inspiration from anything, perhaps this would be the thing to choose, rather than fighting to see who among them can be the toughest on immigration. But the latter is the path they’ve chosen, and Moderate Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told the DN daily in a new interview that her government “is prepared to do whatever it takes to get immigration numbers down”.

You hear similar pledges from the right wing to the centre-left.

The leader of Kommunal, Sweden’s largest trade union for municipal workers (for example people who work in elderly care or preschools), urged the Social Democrats to stop “copying the Sweden Democrats”.

“Elderly care was barely mentioned in the election, despite the fact that all parties seemed to agree during the pandemic on how important and underserved it is. It is tragic,” she told DN in an interview last week.

As a news site founded by immigrants for immigrants, here at The Local we’ll keep covering this issue and other issues that matter to you.

In a new article, The Local’s acting editor Richard Orange (filling in for me while I’m on maternity leave) looked at the number of people who could be affected if the government abolishes asylum-related permanent residence permits, as Malmer Stenergard has said it wants to do.

On the latest episode of our Sweden in Focus podcast, my colleagues discussed Sweden’s plans to introduce a state-mandated cultural canon and what it will mean for foreigners (the episode also features a really interesting interview with Pakistan’s ambassador to Sweden).

In other news

The man who murdered a high-profile psychiatrist at Sweden’s annual political festival in July was last week found guilty of murder and preparing to commit a terror offence – the latter because of his plans to also attack Centre Party leader Annie Lööf. He was sentenced to psychiatric care.

Sweden’s business and energy minister, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch, has called on people to reduce their heating by 1C and halve their use of hot water in order to reduce electricity demand over the winter.

As Le Monde’s Nordic correspondent pointed out, that’s a very different tune to the campaign in 2021 when Busch, armed with a vacuum cleaner, criticised the then-government for urging people to save energy.

If you speak Swedish, a new documentary by public broadcaster SVT follows Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson and Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar on the campaign trail and in post-election talks.

Sweden’s popular speaker of parliament, Andreas Norlén, is ready to travel to Ankara to help negotiate Nato membership with Turkey, according to emails seen by DN. Nothing’s been decided yet, though.

Sweden Elects is a weekly column by Editor Emma Löfgren looking at the big talking points and issues after the Swedish election. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive the column as a newsletter in their email inbox each week. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.