Sweden is experiencing a turbulent political summer: Just a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Löfven was re-elected to office after a government crisis. Now he is announcing his final resignation.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven will retire this autumn after seven years at the helm.
The 64-year-old announced on Sunday that he would resign from his position as chairman of the Social Democrats at the beginning of November and then also quit as head of government. The decision had matured in him for a while, said Löfven on Sunday in Akersberga near Stockholm.
In June he had already announced his resignation after a vote of no confidence in parliament. The social democrat was about to end his political career. The trigger for the crisis in his minority government was a dispute with the smaller left coalition partner over rental prices for new buildings. Only a few days after the lost vote, however, he was able to get the necessary support in parliament again. Löfven leads a red-green minority government that depends on the support of other parties.
“It’s not easy, but it’s right. That is the most important thing, “said Löfven at a press conference of the Social Democrats on Sunday afternoon. General Secretary Lena Rådström Baastad said it could not be overstated how important Löfven was to his party and to Sweden as a country.
After his re-election, Löfven made it clear that the political problems were far from off the table. The situation in the Reichstag was still very difficult, there was no doubt about that, he said at the time. Since then, there have been several speculations about an early departure. Nevertheless, Löfven’s decision came as a surprise to many at this point in time. A decision on his successor is now to be made at a party congress of the Social Democrats. The meeting will take place in Gothenburg from November 3rd to 7th.
Thanks to many years of government experience, Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson, who several Swedish media described as Löfven’s “Crown Princess”, is the favorite for the successor. She is assigned to the more conservative wing of the party. The party’s nomination committee wanted to meet as soon as possible, it said at the press conference.
In the current parliament, the majority of Prime Minister Löfven is extremely thin: together, red-green only has 116 of the 349 seats. He can only get the extremely narrow majority of 175 votes in total with the help of the Left and the Center Party, which support his minority government. However, events such as the crisis in early summer show that everything is on shaky ground.
In recent years it has become much more difficult to find political majorities in Sweden. The classic constellation with two roughly equally strong camps – a left-wing one with the Social Democrats at the top and a bourgeois one under the leadership of the moderates – is gone. With the rise of the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, everything has become more complicated.
The former trade unionist Löfven became Prime Minister for the first time in October 2014. After the most recent election in 2018, it took several months to reach an agreement with the center and the Liberals. Both actually belong to the bourgeois bloc, but supported Löfven in return for concessions. This also relied on the votes of the left, which however dropped him in the vote of no confidence in early summer.
The agreement with the Center Party and the Liberals is a thing of the past. The center also refuses to allow the Left Party to influence. The Greens, on the other hand, do not like the reform demands to which the center links its support for Löfven. The negotiations on the upcoming state budget were considered particularly contentious. The next regular parliamentary election in Sweden is planned for September 2022.
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