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A taste of what would be the biggest political earthquake in Sweden for decades can be found in the unremarkable southern town of Sölvesborg.
After the last elections in 2018, the nationalist Sweden Democrats took control of the local council in the seaside town of just 17,000 people.
With an eye-catching mix of policies such as a begging ban and hiring security guards to protect the town, Sölvesborg, the hometown of party leader Jimmie Åkesson, has served as a “shop window” for the Sweden Democrats and their policies, said Ann-Cathrine Jungar, senior lecturer at Södertörn University.
Like far-right groups in Germany, France and Belgium, the Sweden Democrats have long been ostracised at a national level because of their roots in the neo-Nazi movement.
But the Sweden Democrats could be the big winners of Sunday’s national elections, with polls suggesting they might become the country’s second-largest party and the biggest of the rightwing opposition.
Should the right win — polls put them level with the ruling centre-left bloc led by the Social Democrats — then the Sweden Democrats would probably gain influence, either as a support party in parliament or possibly even in government.
“It would be both seismic, and at the same time a natural progression of the past decade when they have gone from being pariahs to in many ways a normal party,” said one former centre-right minister.
What the Sweden Democrats have done in Sölvesborg has received outsized attention for what is a typical small Swedish town. National media have reported on various controversies: thousands of library books and artworks were thrown away, the Pride flag no longer flew from municipal buildings and a councillor said the town would not buy any art about menstruation even though it never had done.
Louise Erixon, the town’s 33-year-old Sweden Democrat mayor and Åkesson’s former partner, said Sölvesborg was now the best-known location in Sweden outside its big cities.
“We could never have bought the attention we received. I’m super happy. Sölvesborg has become more attractive,” she said in an interview.
Sölvesborg is part of the Sweden Democrats’ stronghold in southern Sweden, where the party’s rise was powered by a simple message that shocked the country’s establishment: that immigrants were threatening the country’s generous welfare system. They entered the national parliament in 2010, and took control of their first councils, including Sölvesborg, in 2018.
In other towns, controversy has dogged the Sweden Democrats with candidates having to resign from the party for pro-Nazi or xenophobic comments. But in Sölvesborg, the Sweden Democrats have governed with the same centre-right parties they hope to work with at the national level and the results seem to be welcomed by many.
The town has risen in the annual rankings that show how easy it is to do business in each municipality. “The Sweden Democrats have been good for companies,” said the owner of a local Italian restaurant.
Erixon argued that Sölvesborg showed the Sweden Democrats were ready for influence at a national level. “It shows we’re a party that’s mature. It shows we have experience, knowledge of running things and a trust with voters,” she said.
Most of the criticism from the other parties sounds like normal local politics. The Social Democrats, who admit they may have become complacent after running the town for decades, object to a new private elderly care home and town security guards hired to help out the police.
But Birgit Birgersson-Brorsson, local leader of the Social Democrats, said that while this might seem undramatic to outsiders, there had been a change in rhetoric. “They make people insecure, afraid of things,” she said. While the Financial Times visited her Sölvesborg party headquarters, an immigrant shop owner arrived to complain about the racist abuse he had received.
At a national level, the Sweden Democrats say they will only support a government that promises to deport any foreigner convicted of a crime, a ban on begging and the introduction of stop-and-search zones in suburbs hit hard by gang crime. An average of recent polls puts them on 20 per cent, ahead of the traditional main centre-right opposition party the Moderates on 18 per cent but behind the Social Democrats on 29 per cent.
Jungar at Södertörn University said this election would show that Sweden was not a “special country”, but like other European nations where the mainstream right had accommodated a radical right party. “The most important thing is that they have been accepted,” she added.
That is as true in Sölvesborg as at the national level. Kith Mårtensson, the deputy mayor who is from the Moderates, said she was a sceptic at first but had found Erixon and the Sweden Democrats good partners. “If my party hadn’t gone into power with the Sweden Democrats, then I think it would have disappeared,” she said.
The Social Democrats, in power nationally for the past eight years, have stepped up their warnings about the nationalist party, calling them “neo-fascists”. Stefan Löfven, the former prime minister, this week called the Sweden Democrats “a serious threat to democracy”.
Erixon, who has been active in the Sweden Democrats since 2006, said the party and its image had changed completely over that time.
“Bricks were thrown at members’ houses, people were fired from work or socially excluded. That has changed,” she said. “But we haven’t changed our policies. The Swedish people just needed time.”
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