I CARE - - Swedish opposition to the far right: Talk to the hand

18.1.18

I CARE - - News - Internet Centre Anti Racism Europe: The stage for Sweden’s current debate over immigration was arguably set in 2011 when Fredrik Reinfeldt, a previous Moderate Party leader and two-term prime minister, pushed through a policy of liberalization which made his country one of the most welcoming in Europe for asylum seekers. His four-party coalition joined with the Green Party to get the necessary votes in parliament. “This is a decision which closes the door on xenophobic forces who want influence in this area,” he said then, in a veiled reference to SD. For four years, the border regime remained lax and ministers who criticized it were swiftly rebuked by Reinfeldt, who called on Swedes to “open their hearts” to immigrants in a speech before he lost power at an election in 2014.

Analysts and many Moderate insiders put that election failure down to Reinfeldt’s underestimation of the support for SD and its call for a cut in immigration to virtually zero. SD had entered parliament with 5.7 percent of the vote in 2010, surging to 12.9 percent in 2014. Since then it has vied with the Moderates for second spot in opinion polls, after L�fven’s Social Democrats. As the Moderate Party regrouped in 2015 and 2016, a surge in immigrants from Syria and other war-torn regions forced the Social Democrat-led government into a U-turn. The Moderates backed the shift, and under a new leader, Anna Kinberg Batra, they tried to seize the initiative by reaching out to SD in January 2017 and proposing talks.