Why Sweden’s centre-right prime minister is proving hard to beat
Fredrik Reinfeldt is one of Europe’s most successful politicians. Alongside Angela Merkel in Germany, he is among a very small band of incumbents who have been re-elected since the economic crisis began, beating the social democrats in 2006 and 2010 with a modern conservative appeal which has influenced David Cameron and many others along the way.
His meteoric rise began after a disastrous election for the Moderate party in 2002. As a fresh-faced 37-year-old, he assumed the leadership of a broken party that had won only 15.3 per cent of the vote, quickly moving to rebrand the party as the ‘New Moderates’. Reinfeldt’s genius lay in convincing his movement to broadly accept the Swedish social model and to refrain from attacking the state and from concentrating on tax breaks for the wealthy. He presented his team as a young group of modern, family-friendly conservatives who would make life better for working Swedes by competently managing both the economy and the welfare state.
His New Moderates, according to Swedish journalist Eric Sundström, ’understood the life puzzle that faced the growing urban middle class in Sweden’: trying to combine a career with family life, where you work hard, get the benefits of social security and feel like you have a bit to spare for all your efforts. They offered a slightly cheaper version of the social democratic welfare state, complete with tax cuts for lower- and middle-income earners as well as some politically eye-catching tax breaks such as deductions for home improvement and household services.
It was political triangulation and rebranding at its best – and it worked. For too long the social democrats simply labelled Reinfeldt as the same old wolf in sheep’s clothing, neglecting to raise their game as he continued to blur the boundaries between left and right.
If in 2006 the social democrats largely lost the election due to his fresh appeal and move to the political centre, then in 2010 they lost in part because Reinfeldt had established himself so successfully on the centre-ground to the extent that the election was fought along personality lines. This suited the prime minister as he is a trusted and liked politician: today, he continues to be the most popular political leader in Sweden, running 14 per cent ahead of his social democratic challenger despite his party losing support and sitting second in the opinion polls.
And the ominous news for the social democrats is that the most popular politician in Sweden today is the Moderates’ pony-tailed and charismatic finance minister, Anders Borg. The chancellor is tipped to succeed Reinfeldt in time for the 2014 general election. He is even credited in places as the brains behind the success of the New Moderates – both coming up with ideas and divising ways to implement them. This would represent another formidable challenge for the Swedish left.
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Michael McTernan is editor and senior researcher at Policy Network
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Sadly, seemingly written in awe of the The Moderate Party (Swedish: Moderata samlingspartiet) the Swedish equivalent of the Lib Dems or One Nation Tories – with precious little mention of our own sister party in Sweden – the Sveriges socialdemokratiska arbetareparti or Swedish Social Democratic Workers’ Party . I’ve long argued – and here’s proof – that Progress would be off like a shot if they felt they could advance their politics (and ultimately themselves) in another more amenable, less, well, *proletarian* milieu – and articles like this do nothing to convince me otherwise.
If you are centre-right, join the Lib Dems. Labour is for people on the centre-left