Swedish PM opens door to governing with Sweden Democrats if his party wins vote

By Johan Ahlander and Anna Ringstrom

STOCKHOLM, April 1 (Reuters) – Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Wednesday that his Moderate party would aim to form a majority government with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats if it wins a parliamentary election on September 13.

The move, long expected given the parties’ close cooperation with the current right-wing minority government, clarifies a key question for voters as campaigning gathers steam.

The opposition centre-left bloc currently leads in polls and the right needs to club together to have a chance of forming a government.

“After the election, we will form a four-party majority government,” Kristersson told a press conference. “I will form and, as prime minister, lead that government.”

Kristersson said the Sweden Democrats would have a strong influence and important cabinet posts in such a government, citing immigration and integration as areas on which the party might lead.

The Sweden Democrats, the second-biggest party in the 2022 election, were long political outcasts but have become indispensable to the right, which cannot form a government without them.

LATEST STEP IN A PLAN TO GAIN INFLUENCE, AKESSON SAYS

Formed in part by activists with neo-Nazi and white supremacist ties in 1988, the Sweden Democrats apologised last year for their antisemitic and racist past.

The party first entered parliament in 2010 and currently supports the right-wing coalition government in the Riksdag under a far-reaching cooperation deal, but has no members in the cabinet.

Jimmie Akesson, which has led the Sweden Democrats since 2005 when it was a tiny right-wing fringe party, said this was just the latest step in a long plan to gain influence and rival the Social Democrats as the main political force in Sweden.

“We are there now, but we are not satisfied yet,” he told reporters. “Now we are going to win this election, and we’ll take it from there.”

Last month, a hurdle to the Sweden Democrats joining a possible post-election right-wing government was removed when the Liberals dropped their long-standing refusal to consider backing a government that includes Akesson’s party.

While the opposition centre-left bloc now leads in the polls, the Social Democrats, the biggest party in parliament, face their own issues in cobbling together a ruling coalition that would involve several smaller parties.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Anna Ringstrom; writing by Niklas Pollard; editing by Louise Rasmussen and Bernadette Baum)