Johan Pehrson elevates the role of parents to domestic politics and Almedal talks about father anxiety, i.e. the feeling in a parent that they have not done enough to help their child in life, through school.
It creates a high recognition factor for many and he probably hopes it will win votes for his struggling school party. But above all, it’s probably a way to avoid talking about the elephant in the room.
The Liberals are having a hard time in several ways – they are fighting for their survival under the 4 percent barrier to the Riksdag. And they struggle to be relevant in a government where their liberal stance has difficulty making itself heard. Now most recently after the heated debate about SD’s anonymous accounts, where the Liberals remain alone among the Tidö parties in their demands that SD stop using anonymous accounts.
Pehrson risks crossing a red line
And SD constantly makes new advances against the Liberals’ defense positions. This week through new demands to sit in government, which forced Pehrson to once again paint a red line that he risks violating after the next election.
The Almedal speech was Johan Pehrson’s opportunity to address all these topics. Or trying to bury them. Perhaps it is not so strange that he chooses the latter, that the speech is completely freed from references to troll factories, the government issue or climate policy.
Focuses on school
Instead, he focuses entirely on the school, and the speech’s only reference to the Sweden Democrats concerns precisely the statement Jimmie Åkesson made earlier this week that SD will become Sweden’s school party. Johan Pehrson goes point by point through what the Liberals have achieved in the school issue and demonstrates that it is his party that has the ownership of that particular issue.
“The Liberals are Sweden’s school party!” says Pehrson with address Jimmie Åkesson. But the SD leader, if he would possibly listen, has of course already left Almedalen.