It has blown up into a political hurricane in the Moderates after the announcement of a new gender identity law. The party leadership was forced on Friday to call two crisis meetings to try to cool down the heated atmosphere in the party.
Criticism from within its own ranks is fierce. According to several M members, there is a lack of support for the bill in their own parliamentary group. The picture is set that the prime minister himself was pushing to get the parliamentary group to vote yes.
Statement exacerbated the crisis
Therefore, Ulf Kristersson’s statement on Thursday has deepened and worsened the internal crisis. He then said that he himself would have preferred a continued 18-year age limit for legal gender reassignment, further stirring feelings in the party. If even the Prime Minister does not wholeheartedly back the compromise in the Riksdag on a new 16-year age limit, why should fundamentally critical M members support it in the Riksdag?
Now the Moderates are trying to manage the crisis. Kristersson claimed that at Friday’s meeting he really only expressed the Moderates’ policy in the controversial SVT interview. At the same time, the party leadership believes that the defense of the compromise is also about keeping the government together. The liberals are singled out as pushers.
The party leadership was warned
This type of question often has a great political explosiveness. However, the widespread criticism of the bill seems to have come as a complete surprise to the moderate party leadership. Nevertheless, the party leadership was warned that this issue would risk exploding in Kristersson’s face.
And now that it has happened, it is no longer just a matter of political fact. The political battle that is now taking place in the Moderates means that the issue is also about the party leader’s authority and prestige.
That is why he doggedly defends the proposal for a new gender identity law – despite the criticism and despite the fact that the political price may be high for the Moderates. Both the Sweden Democrats and the Christian Democrats, who compete for partly the same voters, are harsh critics of the bill.