00:00Sweden now and bring in the view from the historian Professor Lars Trågaard.
00:05Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:07Just tell us first, what is the feeling there in Sweden this morning?
00:09Was this outcome expected?
00:13Well, everybody knew it was going to be a very tight election.
00:17You know, the Social Democrats have actually made their worst election
00:21almost historically since the introduction of universal suffrage.
00:26And it's not clear yet, you know, what the result is going to be.
00:32They are relying on a very unwieldy coalition, including the left party,
00:38but also the centre party that is fundamentally a centre-right party
00:42that is only a part of that coalition because of resistance to the Sweden Democrats.
00:49So it's a very messy situation, actually.
00:52Messy situation, indeed, that we're trying to digest here.
00:54But it does seem clear that the far right will not be entering government,
00:58as many expected and were potentially reporting this weekend.
01:02Is this a rebuke from the Swedes?
01:05Yeah, I think that the irony, I think, right now is that the current government
01:10has been actually quite active and produced a lot of reforms.
01:16And the gang killings have gone down dramatically.
01:20So in some sense, they are victims of their own success at this point.
01:25And I think there are many Swedes, you know, who are voting against,
01:30particularly the Sweden Democrats, want to have a kinder sort of face to Sweden, right?
01:36They are happy with the stricter policies with regard to immigration and crime.
01:41But on the other hand, they also still like to be a bit of the moral superpower that they have
01:47been in the past.
01:49So I think what they like is to keep in place the reforms that have been carried out.
01:56But they also want to move on to other issues, perhaps closer to questions around the economy,
02:03you know, health care, education and so forth.
02:06So I but it's very clear what what government we're going to see is going to be a lot of
02:12negotiations coming up.
02:14The moderates, the more traditional right at the center right party did extremely well as well.
02:20So.
Comments