Election year

Carl Bildt ends his blogging for the summer with a post about the upcoming election here this autumn. He being the first conservative PM in almost 20 years back in 1991, he has a rather clear view of the political climate in Sweden.

The centre-right Alliance is focusing on the inability too create sufficient employment in the economy, which is undoubtedly a key long-term problem, although it might not be seen as that acute in a situation in which the figures are starting to improve somewhat.

The Social Democrats, for their part, are almost exclusively concentrating on negative campaigning against the opposition. It's the usual smear campaign, saying that any other government would be the fairly immediate end of most of the good things in life.

But they have a number of big problems.

One is that while PM Göran Persson certainly does not want to lose the election, I'm not certain that he really wants to win. He gives the distinct impression of wanting to do most other things in life except being Prime Minister - done that, seen that. And the quality of governance is clearly suffering as a result.

Then there is the problem of his semi-alliance with the Green Party and the ex Communists. They are both pretty wild in their demands.

The ex-Communists have just published a platform advocating a massive increase in public employment as well as Sweden leaving the Schengen cooperation and the "dissolution" of the European Union.

For a party that never asked for the "dissolution" of the Soviet Union that's undoubtedly somewhat on the thick side.

Personally I would rather see a Centre-Right alliance than yet another period with the Social Democrats. They jut feel old and worn out and hasn’t really done anything concrete with the high number of unemployed or people living on some kind of well fare and pension from the government. It’s something wrong with the system when one can get a pension (rather small, but still) from the government even before you turn 30. Instead of looking into the problem why people are on disability leave or living in well fare the Social Democrats have just made people depend even more on the government. But the government isn’t responsible for your own life. You are! I just don’t get it!