Opposition Wins Swedish Election

Opposition claims victory in Swedish election
By David Rennie, Europe Correspondent


(Filed: 18/09/2006)



Sweden's centre-Right opposition alliance claimed victory in elections yesterday, as the prime minister, Goran Persson, admitted defeat and said his government would resign, ending 12 years of Social Democrat rule.

"We campaigned as the New Moderates, we won as the New Moderates and together with our alliance partners we will rule Sweden as the New Moderates," opposition leader Fredrik Reinfeldt told a crowd of supporters last night.

Mr Reinfeldt and the opposition bloc led by his Moderate Party had a narrow lead over Mr Persson's Social Democrats, incomplete results on the Election Commission website showed. Last minute surveys had shown the opposition alliance edging as much as 6.9 per cent ahead of the Social Democrats, the country's dominant political force, which has held power for most of the past 74 years.

advertisementThis Swedish election has implications across Europe. European Union leaders recently called for Europe to learn from the unique "Nordic social model", which has seen countries like Sweden blend robust free market capitalism with high taxes and a welfare state of astonishing generosity. During the campaign, the opposition leader, Mr Reinfeldt went out of his way to assure voters that he had no intention of tearing that model down, though he said years of lavish benefits and high taxes had led too many Swedes to conclude it was not worth going out to work.

"The Nordic welfare model is in many aspects a good model but it needs more of a choice for individuals," Mr Reinfeldt told reporters as he began a campaign walk through central Stockholm.

Mr Reinfeldt has compared himself to David Cameron, and has moved his party dramatically on to the centre ground. The Moderates suffered a political near-death experience only four years ago, when they went into the 2002 elections offering deep tax cuts and a major shake-up of the welfare state, and were promptly punished with just 15.3 per cent of the vote.

Mr Reinfeldt now promises to pay for tax cuts by trimming benefits after 200 days out of work from 80 per cent of a worker's former salary to 70 per cent.

They also challenge official figures showing unemployment at 5.7 per cent, insisting the real total was 20 per cent, when people on sick leave and government job schemes were included.