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The Social Democrats are developing new policies and a new party program must be nailed down to the congress in 2025.
The work creates high expectations that the party leadership will take serious action in several areas.
– I know that expectations are very, very high and that the pressure on management is intensifying, says an S source.
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The Social Democrats’ party secretary Tobias Baudin is out in reality.
He says he likes to be, that he tries to visit reality at least once a week.
This time the reality is in an industrial area in Årstaberg in southern Stockholm.
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The Social Democrats’ party secretary Tobias Baudin.
1 / 2Photo: Björn Lindahl
Tobias Baudin visits a logistics center to see how the warehouse staff are doing and to do a trial job.
– Will you take some pictures then? he asks his press secretary as he folds up some plastic trays.
The proof that the S-top “worked” on the warehouse is published later on Tobias Baudin’s Instagram.
“Society has changed”
He has never won an election. The loss in 2022 resulted in the party leadership starting a reshuffle.
Under the slogan “New direction for Sweden 2030”, eleven internal working groups produce new social analyzes and new reforms “to create a new social community”, as it is called.
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full screen Tobias Baudin stands together with Jordin Williams who works at the logistics center in Årstaberg. Photo: Björn Lindahl
Part of the work consists of the development of a new party program to be nailed down at the party congress in Gothenburg in 2025.
The latest party program was hammered out in 2013 and is now out of date, believes Tobias Baudin.
– Society has changed and then the program must be rewritten, he says.
Points to ideological changes within S
The party secretary brings up gang crime as an example of social problems that are not addressed in the old party program but must be addressed in the new one.
The program from 2013 states that Sweden must be non-aligned. It is a position that S has abandoned because the party now stands behind Sweden’s entry into NATO. This too must therefore be revised in the new programme.
The Social Democrats’ party secretary Tobias Baudin.
1 / 3Photo: Björn Lindahl
Climate policy is another example that the party must update its view on, believes Tobias Baudin.
– There was a lot of focus on taking public transport and taking the bicycle to work. But so much more has happened than that. We have to change and that is very positive for jobs, but that connection is not there.
Has the party also changed ideologically since 2013?
– Yes, I think so. You just have to say it like it is. After all, I have been chairman of Kommunal, but this also applies to social democracy, where we allowed more practitioners into welfare, venture capital companies and limited liability companies. After all, it has driven a marketization of welfare.
Sources: High expectations put pressure on management
Magdalena Andersson recently gave a speech under the slogan “A new direction for Sweden”. In the speech, the S leader addressed the party’s rise in several policy areas.
– When I was elected party chairman for the Social Democrats, we started a course change for our party, said Magdalena Andersson.
The question is how many degrees the compass turns when the S-leader’s shift has now begun – and in which direction the party is heading.
The party leadership’s appointment of internal working groups and the ambition for a new party program have created very high expectations within S.
A high-ranking social democrat says that the leadership’s opening has increased the members’ demands that the new proposals and the party program should actually be translated into new policies.
– I have not seen anything like this before in the party. People talk about a new era, with new opportunities for us to do away with old politics. It puts pressure on Magdalena to act on it, says the social democrat.
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full screen Social Democrats party leader Magdalena Andersson. Photo: Björn Lindahl
Another highly placed social democrat says that the management probably did not count on the pressure that is being created now that the internal work is progressing and getting closer to the end point.
– I know that expectations are very, very high and that the pressure on management is intensifying. You have to deliver on what the party perceives as promises to reconsider parts of our policy.
The source specifically points to the economy, integration and climate as three areas where the party leadership must develop new policies for the 2025 congress.
The S-veteran: “Should be a compass”
Hans Dahlgren is the main secretary of the program commission, which draws up the new party program.
76-year-old Dahlgren has previously been EU minister and state secretary in Stefan Löfven’s governments. He has also been press secretary and adviser to Olof Palme.
In other words, he knows his party well.
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full screenHans Dahlgren during the government’s summer fika 2021. Photo: Aftonbladet / 85729
– It feels like there is an urge to talk about ideological issues. People want to discuss and you can see that a lot has happened since the last program, he says.
Hans Dahlgren’s office at the party’s office in the Riksdag is small, no pictures hang on the walls and the bookshelf is empty.
On the table in front of him is a blue folder filled to the brim with various papers. Hans Dahlgren opens the folder to find a quote from Tage Erlander that he saved.
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full screen Take Erlander in his service room during an interview with Aftonbladet in 1968. Photo: Rune Johansson
Erlander was responsible for drawing up the party program in 1960.
– The program revisions are a recurring self-examination and political position determination. The movement is welded together when the members are given the opportunity to reflect on society’s changes and what they mean for the party’s work and path choice, quotes Hans Dahlgren.
What is the significance of the party programme?
– Political guidelines can be changed from one congress to another, motions or bills can be changed from one year to another. The party program must apply for the next ten to fifteen years and must be the compass, or the backbone, that representatives must lean against, says Hans Dahlgren.
The ideologue: “Magdalena is tough, she dares”
Anne-Marie Lindgren sits in a meeting room in S’s headquarters, Sveavägen 68.
She is one of Social Democracy’s leading ideologues and was involved in developing three party programmes: 1975 for Olof Palme, 1989 for Ingvar Carlsson and 2001 for Göran Persson.
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full screen From left: Ingvar Carlsson, author Lena Rådström Baastad and Anne-Marie Lindgren. Photo: Claudio Bresciani/TT
The distribution policy and the environmental issue are examples of issues that the party should emphasize in the new program as well as in the working groups’ reform proposals, Anne-Marie Lindgren believes.
These are areas where the market has not managed to produce a good result and the state must then step in and take responsibility, she says.
– It’s about the market versus the individual, distribution of power.
Anne-Marie Lindgren shares the picture that expectations are high for the party leadership to take advantage of the will to change that now exists in the party.
– The management has opened this up because you feel that something is happening and that you cannot continue on the same line that you have been on for two decades. It doesn’t really last, she says.
Anne-Marie Lindgren does not believe that Magdalena Andersson would back away from reconsideration of her own policy or sharp wording in the party program.
– Magdalena is tough, she dares.