“I will be a liberal and bourgeois lightbulb on Ulf Kristersson and his government,” said Muharrem Demirok when the election committee nominated him as the new leader of the Center Party after the resignation of Annie Lööf.
— In the very limited sense, it fits very well with Annie Lööf’s line and the current direction in the party, says Jonas Hinnfors, professor of political science at the University of Gothenburg.
“Surprisingly little criticism”
The Center Party retreated from 8.6 to 6.7 percent in the parliamentary election last fall, and Hinnfors believes that the party has a difficult-to-navigate political map ahead.
— It is closed on the right when you have bound yourself to the mast not to cooperate with SD. Given current government cooperation and the Tidö agreement, that door is closed and bolted, it is totally locked, says Jonas Hinnfors.
“There is surprisingly little internal criticism in the party around that line,” he continues.
Some research shows that the combination of election loss and change of party leader can lead to internal groupings, which have had to stand back in their parties, taking the chance for a changed ideological direction.
“You can see that Ebba Busch was such an occasion where ideological maneuvering began within the Christian Democrats,” says Hinnfors.
“Continuity”
To some extent, this also applies to the Liberals, where there was internal criticism of the January agreement after the election in 2018. Dissenting views personified by Nyamko Sabuni, who was later elected as Liberal party leader (resigned in April 2022).
However, it currently does not look like there will be any such change in the Center Party if Muharrem Demirok becomes the new party leader, Hinnfors believes.
“Here it feels more like continuity, as Annie Lööf was partly to Maud Olofsson (party leader 2001-2011) at the time,” he says.
The decision to point to S leader Magdalena Andersson as prime ministerial candidate before last year’s election, in combination with not cooperating with SD, has meant that C has slowly slipped over to indirectly becoming part of a red-green bloc. Thus, they have also had to accept being placed in the same group as the Left Party, which they managed to keep away from influence during the S-government 2018–2022 through the January agreement.
How to navigate now?
— The question is how to navigate now? There is no unified red-green bloc, but on the contrary, there are four parties that act rather uncoordinated. It will be something for the new party leadership to think about, says Hinnfors.
As long as the current government documents are in agreement, the Center Party can take the opportunity to think about its positioning in the political reality, Hinnfors believes.
– You are in a political context that points to two blocs where C tried for a long time to carve out a position where you would be in the middle. It is difficult for the voters to understand – the middle position is difficult to portray.