To put it mildly, today’s party leader debate was not particularly forward-looking. Much was about what had been, and the struggle over how the depiction of the past should be written.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the discussion of how we got the migration policy of the 2010s. In their internal change work, the Social Democrats have tried to create a self-critical self-criticism. Member of Parliament Lawen Redar presented the result as the party having failed in both migration and integration. But after that, the subsequent discussion has largely been about the fact that the failure, according to S, was actually due to other parties. Initially, they talked about a fear of being associated with the Sweden Democrats. Then that the Moderates bore the bulk of the responsibility.
Hot
Not unexpectedly, this led to a rather heated exchange of views between Magdalena Andersson and Ulf Kristersson in the party leader debate.
“Hypocrisy!” shouted both party leaders belligerently.
The battle for a historiography is not unimportant. But it’s hard to see either S or M winning that battle. Both have been in power during the 2010s. It’s hard to distance yourself from. And the battle gives the Sweden Democrats’ Jimmie Åkesson an opportunity to don his favorite role: The mocked outsider who got it right.
The Sweden Democrats’ party leader snuggled like a well-fed cat in the debate when he had to talk about criminal immigrants being “welcomed by social democrats and Reinfeldt moderates”, without any major rebuttals. And when I asked if Ulf Kristersson wasn’t a Reinfeldt moderate, the answer came promptly:
“Yes. But he has changed his mind.”
A cocky answer that suggests that the Sweden Democrats feel very comfortable with their position in the Tidö collaboration.
A lot can happen
A lot can obviously happen in this area. This spring, the Social Democrats will present a new policy in, among other things, the area of migration policy. And the Moderates hope that the Tidö collaboration will curb the progress of the Sweden Democrats. But the future is, as is well known, a foreign country about which we know very little. And the one who undeniably seemed the most satisfied after today’s debate was Jimmie Åkesson. While Ulf Kristersson and Magdalena Andersson continued to argue about the past.