Less than eight hours after her appointment by Parliament, the new Swedish Prime Minister, Magdalena Andersson, was forced today to step down from her post, after her budget fell and her allies abandoned the coalition.
“There is a constitutional practice whereby a coalition government resigns when a party leaves it. I don’t want to lead a government whose legitimacy is questionable,” the Social Democrats leader told a news conference.
On the night of this very short period, Anderson made it clear that he now hoped to be re-elected to that position in a subsequent vote, seeking a 100% Social Democratic government, without relying on extremist parties.
Andersson was chosen to be Sweden’s first female prime minister after several days of difficult negotiations, and was the victim of a painful political game.
On Tuesday night, the 54-year-old economist – until now the finance minister under her predecessor Stefan Lofven – secured the support needed to get to power “in extreme cases”, thanks to a last-minute deal with the Left Party, promising to raise the lowest pensions, Together with the environment party.
However, another related party in the Swedish parliament, the Center Party, unhappy with the concessions made to the left, withdrew its budget support.
The immediate consequence was that the same parliament that elected Andersson in the morning left its budget to the minority in the afternoon and approved the budget of the right-wing opposition, which had previously been drawn up with the far-right Swedish Democratic Party.
Anderson began by saying that he accepted the situation, but that his minority coalition ally, the Left Party, found it unacceptable to rule with a financial law bearing the stamp of the far right.
Shortly after the budget defeat in Parliament, the Environmental Protection Party announced its departure from the government, forcing Anderson to resign, just hours after his election.
Parliament Speaker Andreas Norlin said he had accepted his resignation and would now begin contacts with leaders of the various parties with parliamentary seats, before deciding how to proceed on Thursday.
