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[Ullus]

Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of Sweden's main opposition party, has said she will step down, with just over one year to go to the general election

The 47-year-old had faced heavy criticism in the past few months with the party plummeting in the polls. Heavy voices within the party, including 11 regional party districts and the Moderate youth wing, had called for her resignation ahead of her announcement on Friday, just months after she survived a previous push.

She told the press conference it was necessary for her to step aside so that the party could instead focus on issues and on winning back support from the voters in Sweden's general elections in September 2018.


The criticism began after she announced in January that she would be prepared to enter into talks with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, in an attempt to put pressure on the Swedish government. The move backfired, resulting in dwindling voter support, and questions being raised about what the party stands for.

A poll this week suggested only six percent of voters backed her to be the next prime minister, compared to current PM Stefan Löfven's 24 percent

More here https://www.thelocal.se/20170825/moderate-opposition-leader-anna-kinberg-batra-resigns

 

[Staf]

Finally. I voted twice on that party during the Reinfeldt era, and she have made the party a joke. I'm on team centrist party next election, really like Annie Lööf.

 

[Ullus]

Finally. I voted twice on that party during the Reinfeldt era, and she have made the party a joke. I'm on team centrist party next election, really like Annie Lööf.

Still undecided between Socialdemokraterna again or Centern this time. Leaning towards Centern.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

she sealed her fate when she caved to the right-most wing of her party who wanted her to open up to the sweden democrats

their poll numbers took a nose dive after that dumb decision

 

[Jackpot]

The criticism began after she announced in January that she would be prepared to enter into talks with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, in an attempt to put pressure on the Swedish government. The move backfired, resulting in dwindling voter support, and questions being raised about what the party stands for.

Can we get some more background? She tried to make a deal with the right-wing and it backfired?

 

[Onlinehero]

None of that cityfolk smartiness could get her out of that pickle no sir

Can we get some more background? She tried to make a deal with the right-wing and it backfired?

Stating that you "have a lot in common" with an inept one question racist party wasn't a great move.

 

[Ullus]

Can we get some more background? She tried to make a deal with the right-wing and it backfired?

On mobile, but this goes a bit more in-depth about that and other things that eventually led to her resignation.
https://www.thelocal.se/20170825/wh...-anna-kinberg-batra-moderates-sweden-election

https://www.thelocal.se/20170128/turmoil-in-sweden-as-conservatives-woo-far-right

 

[mclem]

Finally. I voted twice on that party during the Reinfeldt era, and she have made the party a joke. I'm on team centrist party next election, really like Annie Lööf.

...please tell me her supporters are called Lööfahs.

 

[John Caboose]

I would've never gone Moderaterna (Moderates) but I'm still undecided for the election. Currently it's between Liberalerna (Liberals) or Socialdemokraterna (Social democrats). Previously voted Miljöpartiet (Greens) but it became clear to me that while I shared several political ideals with them their priorities in practice were wildly different.

I hope Alliansen (the right block coalition) goes away, it's better to cooperate in individual areas with different parties rather than cooperate in every single area with the same parties. Nobody will get a majority for anything doing it any other way anyways.

 

[berzeli]

You know what, I'm going to make an actual post and not just a gif response.

This isn't solving the problem the moderate party is facing, adding to that, there isn't an obvious choice for successor, or what politics that person will stand for.
They need to figure out what their party is for, not just what they're against. And that issue goes deeper than who helms the party.

Not that it helped that AKB was seen as uncharismatic, had a tendency to put her foot in the mouth, and her general image best summed up in what is one of the crueller, in a good way, political cartoons I've seen (Swedish political cartoons tend to lack any bite):

-I see here that you completely lack a spine, haven't you felt/known that in any way?
-I have, as an asset.

None of that cityfolk smartiness could get her out of that pickle no sir

The Stockholm moderates did not want her and were the first to go after her, so it's a bit too simplified to blame it on "cityfolk smartiness".

 

[Keasar]

Hopefully a restructuring of the Moderates will win back the voters who switched over to voting for SD (although I still wanna slap each of them for voting on SD in the first place) and make them loose power for the next election.

 

[hydrophilic attack]

Can we get some more background? She tried to make a deal with the right-wing and it backfired?

it actually started earlier. The party is a coalition between conservatives and liberals (in the European interpretation of that term, similar to American libertarians). Under the previous leader, FR, which led the party into power for eight years, they broke a lot with the conservative traditions. This allowed to unite against the social Democrats with purely liberal centre-right parties. They were very open to immigration and cut defense spending by a lot. This was unpopular among the conservative wing of the party but tolerated as long as they won.

Then they lost the 2014 election. A lot of their more conservative voters left for the xenophobic Sweden Democrats. AKB became the de facto party leader in the vacuum left by the FR before he formally resigned before she officially became the party leader. She was from his liberal wing of the party and would probably have preferred to keep moving in that direction.

All since the 2010 election there had been an awkward parliamentary reality: neither the left-wing parties or the center-right alliance had a majority. In 2010–2014, the right-wing government kept the power anyway, because the Sweden Democrats (who had the balance of power) wanted voted with the alliance 90+ percent of the time. The alliance had more seats in Parliament than the left-wing parties and would win any vote as long as the left-wing opposition didn't actively vote together with the Sweden Democrats, which happened only a few times. But the previous Moderate leader didn't want to stay in power after 2014, when the alliance had fewer votes than the left-wing side (and neither side had a majority of its own). Now resigning leader AKB agreed with this stance and the Alliance let the Social Democrats form a government.

This government hit a snag early when they couldn't pass their first budget as the Sweden Democrats chose to support the Alliance budget over their own SD budget. At this time, every reasonable person in Swedish politics realized there was a dilemma. From now on, the racist Swedish Democrats could stop any government they disliked. And you needed a way to deal with it. There were three main paths forward:

• Collaboration between centre-left and centre-right. This was the Social Democrat prime minister's preferred solution. Dividing the centre-right by collaborating with different parts of it have served the Social Democrats well for a long time, and prevented the centre-right from uniting against them (until this happened in 2006 by the formation of the Alliance)
• Technical solution where each side agreed to let the other side pass their budgets in order to keep the racist party from influence. This was favoured by the liberal parties, and the liberal wings of the Moderate and Christian Democrat parties.
• Collaboration between right-wing and Sweden Democrats. Favoured by the conservative wings of the Moderate and Christian Democrat parties.

In the end, a deal was reached for option 2. This would allow the Social Democrat government to pass their budgets for now, and if the Alliance did better in 2018, the Social Democrats would return the favor and allow them to pass their budgets. The racists would be kept out of power. This deal didn't last for even a year. The conservative wings of the Moderate and Christian Democrats hated it. The Christian Democrats got a new conservative leader who allowed the deal to fall in their party convent. AKB could have still kept to the deal, but allowed herself to be pushed by the conservative wing of her party to drop it as well. This was the beginning of the end for her.

The conservative wing of the Moderates had hoped that the resignation of FR would allow them to move back right, which would help them win votes back from the Sweden Democrats. After the technical deal with the Social Democrats fell they felt emboldened and continued to push the leadership right-wards. Which lead to the announcement at the start of this year where the Moderates would start working more actively with the racist party. This was a huge miscalculation. The ratings of the Moderates plummeted as most of the country wants to keep the racists from influence. The Moderates didn't win voters back from the Sweden Democrats. Instead they started leaking in the other direction as well, to the purely liberal centre-right parties.

So now they got rid of the leader that the conservative wing never liked. But what caused the huge drop was her moving in a more conservative direction. So if they choose a new conservative leader, who wants to continue to talk with the racists, that won't help them. If they choose a new liberal leader, what's to stop the conservative wing from sabotaging the new leader as well?

 

[Staf]

Great post hydrophilic attack!