Politics in Sweden: Sweden's government has its 'here's Jimmie!' moment

[Celerity]

The leader of the hard right wing Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson, bounced back into the political fray this week, reawakening Swexit, and pushing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson to embrace the 'Denmark' model of tougher immigration. Here's the latest Politics in Sweden column.

https://www.thelocal.se/20230502/politics-in-sweden-swedens-government-has-its-heres-jimmie-moment

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Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson before an interview on April 29th with the TT newswire. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

The moment Jimmie Åkesson achieved the real political power he'd been pushing for since taking control of the far-right Sweden Democrats back in 2005, he vanished. It's been the new generation of more technocratic Sweden Democrats that has been caretaking the implementation of the Tidö Agreement, notably Gustav Gellerbrant, the former Moderate who wrote the first drafts of the deal, and Henrik Vinge, the party's group leader in the parliament. Åkesson himself has spent the last four months mainly resting at his home in Sölvesborg, leaving the bureaucratic heavy lifting to others.

Last week, though, he was back in what you might describe as a "Here's Jimmie!" moment. For the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals, his return has been something of a rude awakening. First he went out on Facebook and backed a threat from his longtime right-hand man, Mattias Karlsson, to topple the government if it lets the EU's migration pact become law. Then he reawakened the spectre of Swexit, writing in a debate article in Aftonbladet that it was time to reevaluate Sweden's membership of the European Union, which he wrote was increasingly becoming like "a straitjacket". Åkesson's media schedule has been relentless.

On April 27th, he told the rightwing Kvartal magazine that he wanted asylum seekers to Sweden to be held in centres in countries outside the EU, such as Rwanda. On April 28th, he appeared on SVT's flagship 30 minuter interview program, dissing the Liberal Party by stressing that it is Sweden's business minister, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch, and not the environment minister, Liberal MP Romina Pourmokhtari, who gets the last word on the controversial biofuels obligation. On April 30th, he told SR's flagship Saturday interview programme that he believed politicians had a right to influence cultural events paid for by the taxpayer, speaking disparagingly of "drag artists and their various needs to have contact with children in different ways and with different sexual monikers".

For the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals, what Åkesson's return has made clear is that the concessions the parties made to the Sweden Democrats in the Tidö Agreement are not the end of the story. The far-right party is going to keep using its position as the biggest party backing the government to push the other three into ever more uncomfortable territory. The Moderates have this week been downplaying the real risk of a government crisis, arguing, plausibly, that now the Sweden Democrats have a government in place that is enacting their own hardline migration policies, they have little interest in seeing it fall, or any alternative if it does.

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