For a couple of hours, the Tidöledarna snuggled up in Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's kitchen in Strängnäs. They came with Christmas presents, in the occasional Christmas sweater, and were served coffee and Lussebunals. None of the autumn's creaking and tension was noticeable outwardly.
After finishing their working lunch, they came out with the “Strängnäs Paper”. Kristersson called the content a plan for the continued direction of the Tidö cooperation after the next election. For the most part, it consists of areas that are recognizable from today's cooperation, including criminal policy, migration and integration, nuclear power, education and healthcare.
A very broad political plan, then. But it doesn't contain many concrete proposals, and the idea is not that it will result in a joint election manifesto.
Unanswered question
The big question is still what the cooperation will look like after the next election.
We do not completely agree on how we should cooperate after the next election, but we completely agree that we should, says Jimmie Åkesson.
SD demands ministerial posts if the Tidö parties win the election, while the Liberals say a flat no to a government that includes SD. Ultimate demands that do not go together.
We should be given four more years to continue the work, and we do this best through a continued Tidö Agreement, through a bourgeois government in close cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, says Liberal leader Simona Mohamsson.
I am convinced that this will be resolved.
Åkesson also signaled that even if SD continues to be the largest Tidö party, he may refrain from demanding the prime minister's post.
As the parliamentary situation is right now, and as it looks to be after the election, I have a hard time seeing how I could gather a majority.
No PR stunt
For the Tidö parties, it is important to show the image of unity, but KD leader Ebba Busch dismisses the Strängnäs meeting as a PR stunt.
The Strängnäs meeting is quite serious, because it is about how Sweden will be governed – and in what direction – for the next four years, she says.
The Social Democrats' party secretary Tobias Baudin writes in a comment that within the Tidö parties there are incompatible demands about what a government should look like: "Their promise to the Swedish people is that a government crisis awaits if they win."
Ebba Busch hits back and describes the alternative as a "leftist mess".
Who is it that manages to gather a majority? Ulf Kristersson manages to do that and thanks to that we have also resolved very difficult issues.
