As expected, the Liberal Party's party board received a clear majority for its line on the government issue. No vote count was needed.
"I understand that there was broad consensus," says Brange.
He and the party board now hope that the discussion about the government issue is over in the party and that there will be full focus on political issues.
The decided line means that L will aim for a new bourgeois government with M and KD, which will continue to cooperate with SD in the Riksdag, within the framework of a new Tidö Agreement.
The door to the Social Democrats is closed, says Brange.
Leads to extra elections?
The big problem for the Tidö parties, if they win the election, is that SD, unlike the 2022 election, is now demanding ministerial posts. The National Assembly's decision means that L will not allow SD into a government.
Brange believes that the problem can be solved, even if the negotiations will be difficult.
Should the negotiations not reach a conclusion and there are deadlocks in the Riksdag that make no other government alternative viable, then there will ultimately be a special election, but I consider that to be very unlikely.
The National Assembly's decision was made after a long and sometimes fateful debate in which nearly 70 delegates took the podium. Yet, everyone who did not want to speak was allowed to do so.
The 2026 election will be about win or lose for our party. We must be clear that we are on the bourgeois side, said Runo Johansson from Tidaholm.
He wanted to give the party leadership free rein after the election to choose cooperation and remove red lines towards the SD.
Our chance lies with general bourgeois voters, said Johansson.
“Fights against everything”
Others, on the contrary, believed that L was losing voters by continuing to cooperate with SD.
It is difficult to get new members and to recruit new candidates for lists and the reason is SD. It just overshadows everything, said Maria Lundqvist Brömster, Västerbotten.
Some asserted ideological arguments.
This is not about percentages, it is about who we are. We are facing a crucial choice, said Erik Persson Timm from Växjö.
A liberal party cannot cooperate with a party that has a completely different ideology and whose policies contradict everything we believe in.
