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Sweden Is a Step Closer to Having First Female Prime Minister

Sweden Is a Step Closer to Having First Female Prime Minister

Sweden’s Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson sealed a last-minute deal with an ex-communist party that threatened to block her from becoming the largest Nordic nation’s prime minister.

The agreement with the Left Party late Tuesday entails a plan to raise pensions for the retirees who receive the lowest level of payouts, according to website statements. It also outlines how the Social Democrat leader’s minority government will work with the leftists, whose influence was limited by a deal with center-right parties struck by Andersson’s predecessor, Stefan Lofven.

“I am happy that we have agreed to cooperate from now on, including after next election,” Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar said in an interview on public broadcaster SVT. “If Left Party support is needed to form a new government, there will have to be negotiations and talks to reach a wide-ranging agreement.”   

Barring any surprises before the vote early on Wednesday, the deal paves the way for the 54-year old Andersson to become Sweden’s first female prime minister, 100 years after women in the Nordic nation were able to exercise full voting rights. While an election is less than 10 months away, her first challenge in the new job would be an uncertain budget vote in parliament on Wednesday afternoon. 

Andersson, who has been finance minister since 2014, faces a fragmented legislature after the Nordic nation’s politics have been upended by the emergence of the far-right Sweden Democrats in the last decade.

Her government only controls about a third of the seats and as her spending proposal for next year will be pitted against an opposition bill, the cabinet will need active support from the Left as well as a center-right party to prevail. 

The agreement with the Left could make it more difficult for the once-dominant Social Democrats to form stable governments in the longer term as they will likely need to negotiate agreements that include center-right parties with free-market agendas as well as the former communists. 

“This term has shown that for a prime minister to be tolerated for an entire term, all parties need to agree on the government’s entire policy,” Andersson told SVT. “That is a lesson learned from this term.”  

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.