Big Lies in Little Sweden
International partners should take note: our new government has a truth problem.
It all began with a lie. The then opposition leader, Ulf Kristersson of the conservative Moderate Party, made a not so solemn promise to Holocaust survivor Hédi Fried: never ever would he form a government reliant on the racist, populist Sweden Democrats (SD), a party founded by Neo-Nazis. A few years later, that was precisely the government he formed.
After an autumn filled to the brim with broken election promises, the latest lie from Kristersson is perhaps the most interesting yet. During a visit this week to Paris where he met with President Macron, a man deeply troubled by the Swedish PM’s collaboration with a far-right party, Kristersson said in an interview that “for the first time in twelve years” Sweden has “a majority government in place”.
Sweden, of course, has no such thing. All the Kingdom has is a minority government entirely dependent upon the SD, who can remove their support at any time. The situation resembles the position Theresa May found herself in during the hung Parliament of 2017-2019, when she had to rely on the volatile DUP; the biggest difference is that while the Tory Party vastly outnumbered the DUP, the Moderate Party is in fact smaller than the SD.
When a lie is told publicly and deliberately like this, the motive is to cover something up. What, then, is Kristersson trying to hide? Well, probably the sad state of affairs that Sweden has not a majority government, but a puppet regime.
It has become increasingly clear in the last few months that SD leader Jimmie Åkesson is the one really calling the shots. On press briefings, government ministers have even appeared side by side with various spokespersons from the SD – who have, incredibly, stood behind their own podiums adorned with the official government seal (and, for clarity, the words “The Government”).
It is often said of the Nordic countries that we’re a trustworthy bunch. In corruption indexes, Sweden usually ranks alongside Finland and Denmark as the most honest in the world. During a previous Moderate PM, we used to style ourselves a “moral superpower”. (No matter that the same PM greenlit the Nordstream project, and oversaw the building of an arms factory in Saudi Arabia to circumvent our weapons export laws.) In short, we are able to punch above our weight – or so the thinking goes – because our word counts for something.
For the coming six months, Sweden holds the EU presidency. The question is, will this new culture of lies affect our European partners? Does it matter that the Liberal party, which is in the government coalition, says one thing back home about the suitability of SD as political partners, and one thing to its appalled liberal friends in Brussels? Does it matter that Kristersson can’t even be truthful about what kind of government he runs?
I would say it matters greatly – and well beyond the realm of Swedish domestic politics. Just look at the behaviour of our foreign minister Tobias Billström during the last few weeks. Off he goes to Turkey to promise Erdogan (who holds the key to our NATO accession) that Sweden will, among other things, ban the waving of PKK flags. That’s right: the waving of flags.
Upon his return, Billström is immediately accused of selling out legitimate, democratically-minded Kurdish opposition figures, as well as appeasing Erdogan into demanding ever more concessions (thereby actually diminishing our prospects of joining the Alliance). Then what happens? At first Billström denies having made the promise at all. He then backtracks to say that Kurdish flag waving will not be banned outright, but that it could conceivably be used as evidence against people charged with “supporting terrorist organisations”.
Who knows what followed next. An “explanatory” phone call to Ankara, perhaps? Again: one policy for the domestic audience, one for the international one. It is as disgusting as it is unsustainable.
Mark my words, the EU is in for one rocky presidency. The real party of power in Sweden is led by a man who, less than a year ago, refused to say whether he preferred Joe Biden or Vladimir Putin. It is time for Brussels and the EU member states to make clear to Stockholm that this, after all, is still Europe. Nobody wants to live in some strange Scandi version of Mar-a-Lago.
I have to say that your views were far more interesting when your base was in Ukraine since you back then had an almost unique position.