Divided opposition advantage for Kristersson – parties await Andersson

The division of the opposition means that it is still unclear how the Social Democrats will shape their government alternative.

Within V and MP there are expectations that Magdalena Andersson will unite a red-green team, but in S and C the interest is low.

– Right now the situation is locked, says a source in MP.

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– It is pitiful of the Social Democrats not to stand behind this.

Center party Rickard Nordin was angry when he stepped out of the Riksdag chamber that January morning.

His gaze moved up from time to time to passing members of parliament, some of them social democrats, who had just finished the no-confidence vote against climate and environment minister Romina Pourmokhtari (L).

It was a clear loss for the Centre, the Left Party and the Green Party. The Prime Minister sits safely, until further notice. Rickard Nordin was the Centre’s face for the measure.

The Social Democrats had made it clear the night before that they would not support the vote of no confidence. It was thus no shock that the party abstained from voting, but the disappointment nevertheless shone through.

– I had hoped for a united opposition, said the Green Party’s one spokesperson Daniel Helldén.

According to a centrally located source in the Center Party, the party leadership had misjudged how S would act. In addition, there was a lack of contact between the parties prior to the decision.

When S chose not to join, C ended up on the same team as MP and V.

It didn’t look good.

“Wish that Magdalena Andersson made more of an effort”

On one occasion since the change of power, the opposition has stood completely united. It was in August last year when the four parties jointly demanded that the Sweden Democrats’ Richard Jomshof leave his post as chairman of the justice committee.

That too failed because the quartet does not have enough seats in the Riksdag to get anything through.

The lack of coordination within the opposition gives the image of a divided opposition that cannot offer a common resistance to the Tidöpartien’s reform offensive.

Within the Left Party, there is a devout hope that the Social Democrats will stitch together a united opposition as soon as possible.

About six months after the 2022 election V leader Nooshi Dadgostar went out and criticized Magdalena Andersson for not being the coalition leader which the opposition needs to be a credible government alternative.

Even the party’s top name in the EU parliamentary election, also former party leader, Jonas Sjöstedt is on the same line.

– I wish Magdalena Andersson made more of an effort to gather the opposition and make proposals that gather the opposition, he said during a meeting with Riksdag journalists in January.

High-ranking leftists say in background conversations that S’s unifying power is a necessity to be able to bring about talks between V and C.

Other leftists rather highlight a need for S to do more to gather around V and MP in a collaboration that C does not need to be part of.

“Right now the mode is locked”

Even environmentalists testify in background conversations about an expectation that the Social Democrats will do more to rally the opposition.

Several environmentalists say that the MP has invited the C leader Muharrem Demirok to the MP’s parliamentary group in an attempt to open a door for cooperation, but the C leader has given the MP a cold hand.

Muharrem Demirok has also been careful to point out that there is no organized cooperation within the opposition.

– We don’t have a tradition of visiting other Riksdag groups, so I don’t see anything strange in that, Demirok says about the matter when Aftonbladet asks why he doesn’t take the MP’s outstretched hand.

But within the MP, it is therefore expected that S will unite the opposition – and soon.

– Right now the situation is locked. The Social Democrats must take steps to bring everyone together, says a person in the MP’s upper echelons.

S and C have formed strong ties

Some type of cooperation between the parties is to be expected when the parliamentary elections approach in 2026.

The closer you get to the election, the more the S leader Magdalena Andersson will be required to answer about how she sees herself governing the country, which parties she will receive support from or which parties will form part of her government.

So far into the mandate period, S and C have continued to nurture the ties between the parties.

Muharrem Demirok has announced that Magdalena Andersson is his prime ministerial candidate. In April last year, the party leaders made a joint statement about the government’s climate policy and in October they went on a joint trip to Uppsala to address gang violence.

When Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson organized his 60th birthday reception, Demirok and Andersson went there together.

“There is a long way to go until the election”

So far, the Social Democrats have no interest in gathering the extremes within the red-green opposition. Rather, one seems to thrive in the middle.

Although the numbers have recently begun to decline, the party and the party leader have fared well in public opinion. Leading social democrats hold their breath when the question of possible coordination between the red-green parties is raised.

The party wants to use the time in opposition to gather support for its own policies.

The work of developing new political proposals in internal working groups must not be disturbed by collaborations with other parties, points out a high-ranking social democrat.

The fact that it is so far until the next parliamentary election also opens the door for more mistakes by the other opposition parties, which can discolor S if they coordinate, emphasizes another centrally positioned social democrat.

– There is still a long way to go before the election. We want to run our own politics to gather voters around us, not others.