Sweden needs ‘humble government’ after election

STOCKHOLM: The centre-right frontrunner to become Sweden’s next leader said future governments would have to be "humble" to survive, hinting that negotiations on a new ruling coalition would be the hardest in modern times amid a rise in the far right.

While still shunned by all main parties, the Sweden Democrats, founded in part by white supremacists in the 1980s, are now backed by one in five voters and will sorely test any new prime minister’s ability to form a viable government.

"I’m not going to set out my conditions in advance. I note that we have a responsibility to our voters to try to implement our policies and do the best we can," Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson told Reuters, cautioning against high expectations.

"It is a whole new parliamentary situation," Kristersson, 54, a soft-spoken pragmatist, said in an interview at party headquarters in an upscale district of downtown Stockholm." Every new government will need, by Swedish standards, to be a humble government which understands that it is the parliament that holds the power, not the government.

"Negotiating directly with the nationalist Sweden Democrats, whose message that immigration is tearing apart the country’s generous welfare state has polarised politics, remains officially out of the question for rival parties. Few know the cost of breaking the taboo better than Kristersson, who last year took over the Moderates when his predecessor was ousted for saying she was willing to talk to the Sweden Democrats.

While Kristersson is the bookies’ favourite for premier, his Moderates are polling poorly and their four-party Alliance is likely to need at least tacit support from the Sweden Democrats to replace the Social Democrat-led government.

"We will not negotiate with the Sweden Democrats on forming a government, nor regarding whether that government can take power, nor regarding a budget. That won’t happen," he said.