Nicholas Mead

Håkan Juholt has stepped down as Sweden’s Social Democrat leader just 10 months after taking power. Apart from a minor expenses scandal, the main reason is because of the Social Democrats rapidly diminishing support. After more than half a century of dominance in Swedish politics, Sweden’s Social Democrats have been in terminal decline since they lost the 2008 election. The main reason for this is that over the past 20 years, they have slowly been abandoning the concerns of working Swedes in favor of moving further towards the right and business interests.

The only way to stop this decline is if they elect a leader that returns to the social democratic roots that differentiated them from the right and Reinfeldt’s ruling centre-right Moderate Party. Of course, what’s highly likely is that exactly the opposite will happen. Similar to when UK Labour party leader John Smith died and was replaced by Tony Blair and “New Labour”, the Swedish Social Democrats will refuse to acknowledge the roots of their problems and drift further to the right, putting the nail in the coffin of social democracy in Sweden.