With less than three weeks to Sweden’s September 13 election, Sverigedemokraterna leader Jimmie Åkesson has urged right-wing voters not to lend tactical support to his coalition partner Liberalerna.
The intervention has triggered an open row inside Sweden’s conservative bloc, DR reports. Earlier this year, Liberalerna leader Simona Mohamsson embraced Åkesson publicly, and the two announced closer cooperation and a shared ambition to govern together.
According to DR, that conciliatory tone has now changed sharply. In an interview with SVT on Sunday, Åkesson said that if Liberalerna have not reached 3.5 percent in the polls ten days before the vote, blue-yellow voters should back another party in the bloc. In the most recent SVT poll, Liberalerna stand at 1.9 percent, far below Sweden’s 4 percent parliamentary threshold.
Åkesson also said Sverigedemokraterna’s own voters should avoid Liberalerna entirely. That breaks with a Swedish tradition in which voters sometimes support an allied smaller party to lift it over the threshold. Writing afterward on X, he described the two parties as ideological opponents, pointing to the EU, the euro, climate policy and development aid.
Liberalerna hit back
Dagens Nyheter reports that Åkesson called Liberalerna a brake block on Sverigedemokraterna’s policies during the current term. In a separate Dagens Nyheter report, Mohamsson dismissed the stance as a loser mentality and said her party is decisive for the bloc’s future.
Speaking to the newspaper Expressen, Mohamsson said she would not call Åkesson a quisling, referring to a controversy earlier this month. A prominent Sverigedemokrat had used the term, meaning traitor, about figures including Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson. She added that her focus is on the red-green opposition rather than on internal disputes.
Sveriges Radio reports that Mohamsson warned it would be over for Ulf Kristersson’s chances of remaining prime minister without Liberalerna. She also linked the party’s survival to Åkesson’s own ministerial ambitions. In an appearance on SVT’s Aktuellt, she argued that votes are wasted when cast for parties already certain to enter parliament.
Romina Pourmokhtari, a leading Liberalerna figure and the current climate and environment minister, said the bloc should target its opponents rather than attack its own side, according to SVT. Her comment used a blunt image about urinating inside one’s own tent.
Besides Liberalerna and Sverigedemokraterna, the bloc consists of Moderaterna and Kristdemokraterna. The four parties are campaigning on a pledge to form a government together if they win a majority, DR reports. Their strategy through the campaign has been to present themselves as a stable governing alternative.
SVT and Dagens Nyheter both note that Liberalerna are polling clearly below the 4 percent threshold. That is the immediate backdrop for Åkesson’s warning about wasted votes, and for Mohamsson’s insistence that her party holds the bloc together.
