Self-implosion

You know, I'm a man of politics. It's one of the few interesting parts of our daily life that is easy to talk about and can be translated over the world, although there is regional differences in what's good or bad politics for ones country, municipality and so on. But I think most people will agree when someone really fails. In Sweden the latest weeks have been on the Christian Democrats with a civil war over who's gonna be the party leader: the old one from a more liberal branch or a more conservative. Doesn't help that they got run over time after time by the other coalition partners. Well if that isn't the guide to kill a party who dangles on the edge I don't know what is. Lets see how you manage with a party with 30 % support.

That's right. The Social Democrats seems to be even worse. First we have an internal conflict over the new budget when the leaders weren't enough "left" for its members in the parliament. It finally passes and all is well (except the usual political debate over what is good governing and I don't need to tell my view on that). Then we have the calm before the storm and then everything hits the fan today. First the Social Democrats and the Left decides to cancel their participation on the party leaders debate on Sunday with the argument that they don't want to be put together with the Swedish Democrats. This happens right after the news announces that Juholt (the leader of the Social Democrats) have gotten tax-payers to pay ca 160 000 SEK (€ 18 000 or $ 23 000) for the apartment in Stockholm he shared with his girlfriend on the wrong circumstances. If that wasn't enough the big Social Democratic boss of Malmö (the third largest city) announces that he would like to see some kind of second-hand citizenship in order to make it easier to send criminals back from where they came. Oh yeah, and the second largest city, Gothenburg, have had a long-running problem with corruption which is topped today by one municipality chief giving her daughter without education a job before 94 others who also wanted the job. Both being Social Democratic strongholds since everyone was allowed to vote in 1919.

If we analyze this who will win? Well neither S or V since... well, they did everything wrong. SD will win support from those parties. The Alliance win on walk-over and probably will get a hold of more voters from S who can't stand this sheer incompetence. The only reason they would fail against SD would be if they botch this completely... there is some uncertainty there isn't? MP would probably also get a boost from those voters and might even have some of V. All in all everyone but S and V win on this. Maybe that's their plan? To lower themselves so much that the Alliance get all the voters and can rule without fear of being voted down again? Nah... but it seem plausible!