Sweden’s PM on working with the hard right | The Economist

It's not that long ago that the Sweden Democrats  were a pariah, right? They had very dark roots in. some very extreme politics, but now you're in  a power-sharing pact. Your much more welcoming. stance, the Sweden Democrats, has pushed centrist  voters away from you. You know that some people. would say that, other people would say the  opposite. Please please do create a powerful. majority government that actually can run Sweden  in a very unstable environment. I mean that's an.

depending on what you think. Fact is that if  you want to form a center-right government you. need four parties on my side of politics. If you  want to form a center-left government you need. to form a communist on the other side. That's  just simply facts and you can't you know just. think you can pretend it's not the fact and then  it's very well known that there are two parties. in Sweden that are less appreciated or you have  more people that dislike them and that is the left. party and the Sweden Democrats. It's a real it's  it's hurting centrist leaders across Europe when.

they do this this game of saying you know they're  right on all these hardline policies but vote for. me and it's not working for you it's not working  for Emanuel M. And you are given some kind of you. know the migration policies that's the migration  policy we actually went to the last election with. saying that we need to to to remake the Swedish  migration policy. My party did that and we were. very in in a very broad sense we agreed four  parties on my side. The case you make is wrong.

simply. How do centrist leaders get out of this  trap that you end up being squeezed out of office? We are not squeezed in any sense at all. Modern  politics. We all behind in the polls. Yeah. In. the polls. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Know you know  you but you know there is there is one real poll. and that's the election day. And I I know that  all journalists want to have every poll as the. truth for the day and that's not simply not the  case. You have to wait until the election day.

to be have to be able to have a result. and  we have normally made pretty good results on. that. I think the key issue is if you want to gain  people's respect for for for running the country, you need to produce results. As long as you  only talk about problems, people won't trust. your ability to do things. We have proved for  the last four years that we can get things done.