WITH almost all the votes counted in Sweden’s general election, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson resigned when it became clear that her centre-left government had lost to a right-wing bloc by three seats in the 349-seat parliament.
A close result, but hardly the ‘right-wing takeover’ the media prophesied with dread in order to send shivers up the spines of latte drinkers in Notting Hill. The Times lamented ‘the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a hard-right party with Nazi roots’ who have become the second largest party in Sweden with 20.06 per cent of the vote. The Sweden Democrats replaced the Moderate Party as the leading right-wing party. This is a spectacular advance from the low of 0.4 per cent in 1998 or the 1.4 per cent they gained in 2002.
