Jimmie Åkesson

As leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Akesson has steered his party from "pariah" to heavyweight whose support is indispensable if the ...

Once in favour of a "Swexit", the party in 2019 abandoned the idea of leaving the European Union due to a lack of public support. Its rise has come alongside Sweden's heavy immigration. According to Hinnfors, the Sweden Democrats have gone from a party "that says no to everything to a party that considers the parliamentary situation and is beginning to see where they can have the most influence, possibly cooperate, and make the fewest possible compromises". The country of 10.3 million people has welcomed around half a million asylum seekers in the past decade. That's par for the course for someone who in 17 years as party leader has transformed an often-violent neo-Nazi movement known as "Keep Sweden Swedish" into a nationalist party with a flower as its logo. Akesson joined the Sweden Democrats in the 1990s after a disappointing teenage stint in the main right-wing party, the conservative Moderates.

As leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Åkesson has steered his party from "pariah" to heavyweight whose support is indispensable if the ...

Once in favour of a “Swexit”, the party in 2019 abandoned the idea of leaving the European Union due to a lack of public support. Its rise has come alongside Sweden’s heavy immigration. According to Hinnfors, the Sweden Democrats have gone from a party “that says no to everything to a party that considers the parliamentary situation and is beginning to see where they can have the most influence, possibly cooperate, and make the fewest possible compromises”. The country of 10.3 million people has welcomed around half a million asylum seekers in the past decade. That’s par for the course for someone who in 17 years as party leader has transformed an often-violent neo-Nazi movement known as “Keep Sweden Swedish” into a nationalist party with a flower as its logo. Åkesson joined the Sweden Democrats in the 1990s after a disappointing teenage stint in the main right-wing party, the conservative Moderates.

For more than a decade after they entered parliament in 2010, the Sweden Democrats (sd) were shunned by Sweden's other parties because of their roots in the ...

The Social Democrats did win a number of voters from the Liberals, many of whom were angry at that party’s decision to collaborate with the sd. In a late-evening provisional victory speech, he spoke of the need for a samling (“gathering together”) of political opponents to fight polarisation, underlined his respect for Ms Andersson and thanked her for a “good match”. Indeed, many pundits found the Moderates’ campaign to be a pale copy of the sd’s. As for integration, Swedish immigrants are not more unevenly distributed than previously, but there are so many more of them that in some neighbourhoods they have become the majority. The Social Democrats have made up for the loss of working-class voters by recruiting educated urban types who abhor the sd. But that was not enough to make up for the right’s decision to work with the sd. The Sweden Democrats have done well because they talk bluntly about issues that worry Swedish voters, such as rising crime, and the failure of Swedish society to integrate refugees from poor, Muslim countries such as Syria and Somalia. Ulf Kristersson of the centre-right Moderate party (pictured), not Mr Akesson, would then be expected to try to form a new government. Ms Andersson, Sweden’s first female prime minister, put tougher policing and efforts to combat de-facto segregation at the heart of her campaign, along with a hard line against Russia and measures to fight rising energy bills. But with some early votes and votes from abroad still to be counted, the balance could yet swing back to the left. The Moderates, who took 19.1% of the vote, have historically been the largest of the “bourgeois” parties, as Sweden’s conservatives are known. [shunned by Sweden’s other parties](/europe/2020/11/26/how-long-will-swedens-nationalists-be-excluded-from-power) because of their roots in the neo-Nazi movement, and their racially polarising anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Near final results in Sweden's election Sunday show that a bloc of...

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Swedish Prime Minister and leader of the Social Democrats Magdalena Andersson hands in her vote at a polling center in Nacka, near Stockholm, on September 11.

Kristersson has said he would seek to form a government with the small Christian Democrats and, possibly, the Liberals, and only rely on Sweden Democrat support in parliament. Whichever bloc wins, negotiations to form a government in a polarized and emotionally-charged political landscape are likely to be long and difficult. “We don’t know what the result will be,” Kristersson told supporters.