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STOCKHOLM — Magdalena Andersson, Sweden’s Social Democratic Party chief, vowed to push back violent crime and support low-income workers after she narrowly secured the parliamentary support she needed to become her country’s first female prime minister on Wednesday.
Andersson, a 54-year-old economist who has been Sweden’s finance minister since 2014, will take over from her fellow party member Stefan Löfven, who announced his resignation in August.
A fragmented Swedish parliament backed Andersson as Löfven’s successor by one vote. Under the Swedish system, a candidate cannot become prime minister if they are rejected by a majority in parliament, or 175 votes. Only 174 lawmakers rejected Andersson.
After the vote, Andersson said she would focus on law and order and the welfare state, seeking to use her first comments as prime minister to reach out to voters on the right and left with an election looming next September.
“Sweden is a fantastic country, but we are facing a number of serious problems,” she told reporters outside the parliamentary chamber. “I plan to lift every stone to break segregation and push back the violent crime which is plaguing Sweden … and I also want to begin the process of getting a grip on the welfare state to ensure that all workers can enjoy decent conditions,” she said.
The narrowness of Andersson’s victory in Wednesday’s vote is the sign of a bumpy road ahead, and a first jolt could come as soon as Wednesday afternoon with a vote on Sweden’s budget for 2022.
Two spending plans will be on the table — one from the government, one from the opposition — and statements by party leaders so far suggest the opposition’s is likely to win.
Annie Lööf, the leader of the liberal Center Party — which backed Löfven from outside the government over recent years — said her party would not block Andersson’s candidacy as prime minister, but wouldn’t back the government’s budget either. The budget proposes, for instance, the introduction of extra paid leave for parents.
“We can’t support a budget which moves so far to the left,” Lööf told reporters.
That prospect reflects the precarious balance of power in Sweden’s parliament over recent years.
After edging elections in 2014 and 2018, the Social Democrats have led rickety coalitions of leftist, liberal and environmentalist parties with radically different ideological positions.
In the ten months until the next election, Andersson must convince voters that her policy ideas — built on high taxes and an extensive welfare state — are sound, and that she can muster the support she needs in parliament to push them through.
Opinion polling suggests she has work to do: A bloc of the Social Democrats and its likely allies — the Green, Left and Center Parties — gets essentially the same voter support as a four-party right-leaning opposition bloc.
Road to power
Andersson has been an influential figure within the Social Democrats since the mid-1990s.
A ministerial adviser between the mid-1990s and 2009, she was brought back into politics in 2012 by Löfven as his spokesperson for the economy. She became finance minister in 2014 when the Social Democrats won that year’s election.
In that role, she has secured a reputation as a competent operator prepared to debate fiercely with opponents.
In one of her final debates in parliament as finance minister, opposition lawmaker Jan Ericsson accused her of “failing to give answers” and instead choosing to “take swings” at her opponents in her closing statements.
“That’s a shame if Jan Ericsson thinks I am too sharp a debater,” she said, “but I have appreciated our exchanges.”
While policy differences between the parties in the Swedish parliament grabbed headlines in the country on Wednesday, the historic nature of a vote which confirmed Andersson as the first woman to lead Sweden was evident. A number of ministers shed tears as they left the chamber.
While Sweden has sought to promote itself as a champion of feminism over recent years, famously adopting a “feminist foreign policy” in 2014, it has lagged behind its Nordic neighbors which have all had female prime ministers.
Andersson will name her ministers later this week, including her own replacement as finance minister.
Source: Politico
