Pen Trolls and Bickering – Debates We Remember

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Pen Trolls and Bickering – Debates We Remember
Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Today, the first party leader debate of the autumn is being held in the Riksdag. Few debates linger in the memory, but TT has gathered a few that have done so. Here are five nuggets.

"SD=racists"

In September 2014, the Left Party's Rossana Dinamarca wore a t-shirt with the text SD=racists when new speakers were to be elected. This was in protest against Björn Söder (SD) being nominated. She was reported for incitement against a group of people for the act. So how did it go? Björn Söder was elected as vice speaker – and the Chancellor of Justice dropped the report against Dinamarca.

Demirok's pen troll

Center Party leader Muharrem Demirok received a reprimand during a party leader debate in May – due to a pen troll. The act was a marking against SD and the party's so-called troll factories, which were exposed by TV4's Cold Facts. But no props, not even a small troll on a pen, are allowed in the Riksdag, pointed out the Speaker (and Center Party member) Kerstin Lundgren.

With a falukorv in high spirits

In debate after debate before the 2014 election, the Green Party's Gustav Fridolin carried around a lump of coal and promised an end to Vattenfall's brown coal operations. But the act aged worse than the falukorv Ebba Busch (KD) waved around in the 2022 election campaign. When the Green Party ended up in government with the Social Democrats, the promise was compromised away and the coal operations were sold further. And the falukorv? It still costs over 40 kronor.

Andersson's tragicomic frog

In November 2023, Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson became very upset when Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson accused her then-party colleague Jamal El Haj, who had lost several relatives in the war in Gaza, of supporting the terrorist-listed Hamas. Unfortunately, she stumbled over her words in her defense speech and called him Jamal Hamas. Two months later, the Social Democrats kicked El Haj out of the Riksdag group.

"It's just bickering"

A fight broke out between Annie Lööf (C) and Stefan Löfven (S) in a TV4 debate in 2014. Lööf tried to hand over an energy policy report to the Social Democratic leader, who physically waved it away – and Annie Lööf – while irritably repeating:

It's just bickering!

Löfven said during a Riksdag debate in 2021, just before his resignation, that he still regretted his actions and that he did not accept the report.

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By TTEnglish edition by Sweden Herald, adapted for local and international readers

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