Too much focus on tougher demands and harsher penalties. This is what Daniel Suhonen, CEO of the think tank Katalys, thinks about the content of the Social Democrats' proposal for a new party program.
We already have a government with three bourgeois parties and the Sweden Democrats, who are implementing very harsh policies. Then the question is whether the Social Democrats have an alternative there, he says.
Daniel Suhonen believes that the party program "demobilizes the own red-green base" and asks who on the red-green side will "get excited about this".
You can make as many demands as you want and increase penalties as much as you want.
But society must also take responsibility. You cannot leave people to their own devices.
He misses formulations about what kind of economic policy the party wants to see.
I see, for example, unemployment as a very big social problem right now. What should you do about it? Should people make themselves employable? Demand lower wages? Or should society get the wheels in motion and equip people for the jobs that are coming? The individual has very small opportunities to influence, he says.
According to Daniel Suhonen, the Social Democrats have also joined in the program what he calls a bourgeois critique of the integration failures of the past decades.
There may be points in it, but the question is whether it is the soul of social democracy, he says.
