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Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
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Albums

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Muslim Shaggan – Asar

Over the populous span of South Asia, a region...

Dave Sewelson, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, George Cartwright, Anthony Cox and Steve Hirsh – Murmuration

The Arkansas free jazz outpost Mahakala Music says that...

Klein – thirteen sense

For her last album marked the South London maverick...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: Leonore Overture, ‘Farewell Amanda’, ‘One Night’

Ludwig van Beethoven - Leonore Overture No. 1, Op....

Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIaKy1vM9hs 'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: Charles Mingus – ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’

Charles Mingus wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' as an elegy for the pioneering jazz saxophonist Lester Young, who died in March 1959, two months prior to the recording sessions for what would become Mingus Ah Um. A darkly elegant ballad with a lone dissonant note full of pathos...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

The Switch (2010)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she's single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) - they dated six years ago, and though it didn't work out they've got along swimmingly ever since...

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), from southwest Missouri, has worked as a waitress from her early teens. Stuck in grim poverty, she seeks a way beyond her circumstances, and determines to become a boxer. She turns up at a worn-down Los Angeles gym, owned and run by Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) with the help of Eddie 'Scrap-Iron' Dupris (Morgan Freeman): a former boxer himself...

Parasite (2019)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - A family of four live in a cramped and roach-infested banjiha, a semi-basement apartment in Seoul. They crib free Wi-Fi from unsuspecting neighbours and a nearby coffee shop, and their only source of income, procured by the mother Chung-sook via WhatsApp, comes from the folding of pizza boxes for a local delivery service, a task at which they are only moderately successful...

Midsommar (2019)

★ (1 out of 4 stars) - Through a few snapshots of comforting mundanity - the boys' scenes could be from a Judd Apatow movie, minus the laughs - we come to learn of Dani and Christian, a young American couple whose long-term relationship has started to crack. Spurred on by his friends, who find her too needy, Christian has already begun separating himself from Dani, for her part made anxious by her bipolar sister...

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - When it comes to the blockbuster action movie, three franchises remain. There is the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other assorted comic book pictures, y'know, for kids; Tom Cruise, most clearly for the ever stellar Mission: Impossible series, wilfully forgetting Jack Reacher but with shoutouts to American Made, Edge of Tomorrow, and the upcoming Top Gun sequel, sure to be a success; and then there's The Rock...

World Cinema

October Sky (1999)

★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - October Sky is a quaint coming-of-age picture utterly characteristic of this period in American cinema: polished but earnest, overtly sentimental, full of local colour, ostensibly presenting some hard-hitting themes without ever straying from the steely confines of quaint. It's in the same mould as films like The Cider House Rules and especially Billy Elliot, which it preceded by more than a year...

Cactus Flower (1969)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - More than mere confection, which by nature lies there enticingly and dwindles the more that we eat, and just like the titular cactus which sits on dental assistant Stephanie Dickinson's desk, cannily marking her transformation, Cactus Flower positively blossoms. The third film in three years from director Gene Saks - hot on the heels of two resounding Neil Simon success stories...

Risky Business (1983)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Joel (Tom Cruise), a teenager coming towards the end of his time in high school, lives with his parents in a leafy Chicago suburb. He is good-looking and his parents are wealthy, but they are also demanding, and he subsumes a fluent strain of existential angst with worry over schoolwork and his future prospects. Beyond a litany of tests, he is involved in a Future Enterprises programme...

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), from southwest Missouri, has worked as a waitress from her early teens. Stuck in grim poverty, she seeks a way beyond her circumstances, and determines to become a boxer. She turns up at a worn-down Los Angeles gym, owned and run by Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) with the help of Eddie 'Scrap-Iron' Dupris (Morgan Freeman): a former boxer himself...

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) owns a warehouse which manufactures and sells novelty goods - toilet plungers with supposedly non-breakable handles and so on - but channels all of his hopes into one venture: having carried out his research diligently, and as far as the vagaries of the promotion will allow, he has come to understand that by purchasing gross quantities of Healthy Choice pudding...

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)

Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...

The Early Poetry of Mina Loy

When the first issue of Others: A Magazine of...

Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)

Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...

James Joyce

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

Daily Visual 16.06.15: Bloomsday 2015

Bloomsday today in Dublin marks the culmination of a...

Obituaries

Juliette Gréco, Doyenne of the French Chanson, Dies at 93

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJSkGd-t6U Juliette Gréco, doyenne of the French chanson, died on...

Charlie Watts, Steadfast Drummer of the Rolling Stones, Dies at the Age of 80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1_6z9oqet8 Charlie Watts, the backbone of the Rolling Stones for...

Ned Beatty, Deliverance, Nashville, and Network Actor, Dies at the Age of 83

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TwyrAS2lU8 The actor Ned Beatty died of natural causes on...

Brazilian Architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha Dies at the Age of 92

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NidZvaQQrsA The Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha died on...

Culturedarm

Subscribe to Culturedarm

A monthly subscription supports Culturedarm while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

Lock it in and fuhgeddaboudit with an annual subscription to Culturedarm, which supports the site while providing access to special content including playlists and alternative tracks of the week. You get:

• The best new music from free jazz to noise to avant-pop
• Alternative playlists and tracks of the week
• Culturedarm's weekly newsletter straight to your inbox
• Movie reviews, earthy anecdotes, seven of the best and more . . .
• Bookmark your favourite or most hotly anticipated articles
• The satisfaction of supporting independent blah blah blah . . .

placeholder text
3
25
0

Albums

Michael Bisio, Melanie Dyer, Marianne Osiel and Jay Rosen – NuMBq

Introduced by a deft clangour of gongs and chimes...

Michael Gordon & Theatre of Voices – A Western

Assailed by Howard Hawks and John Wayne for its...

Muslim Shaggan – Asar

Over the populous span of South Asia, a region...

Dave Sewelson, Gabby Fluke-Mogul, George Cartwright, Anthony Cox and Steve Hirsh – Murmuration

The Arkansas free jazz outpost Mahakala Music says that...

Klein – thirteen sense

For her last album marked the South London maverick...

Behind the Song

Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’

Beginning her career in pop music at the age...

Behind the Song: Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’

'You Can't Catch Me', one of Chuck Berry's early singles, proved an unexpected commercial flop. It failed to chart upon its release at the onset of 1957 - despite being given prominence by the fledgeling rock and roll feature Rock, Rock, Rock!, which had opened in cinemas the previous month...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Behind the Song: Leonore Overture, ‘Farewell Amanda’, ‘One Night’

Ludwig van Beethoven - Leonore Overture No. 1, Op....

Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’

'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David Bowie's most critically acclaimed album: Pitchfork placed Low at number 1 on their 'Top 100 Albums of the 1970s', on Q's list of the '100 Greatest British Albums Ever' Low was Bowie's highest entry at number 14, and while...

Tracks of the Week

Tracks of the Week 19.01.25

Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace...

Tracks of the Week 12.01.25

Not since Jerry Seinfeld groggily awoke to witness Tim...

Tracks of the Week 04.01.25

Fresh beginnings plus a few festive odds and ends...

Tracks of the Week 17.08.24

Allen Lowe's short bio says that the veteran saxophonist...

Tracks of the Week 10.08.24

David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout...

At the Movies

Toni Erdmann (2016)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Winfried Conradi is so given to practical jokes that he practically depends on them. When he opens the door of his home in the spa town of Aachen, he regales the postman with an elaborate deception featuring look-alike brothers, prison terms, erotic magazines, and mail bombs, tipping the postman for any distress accrued and to make amends for his own strange excesses. He carries a pair of false teeth...

Diego Maradona (2019)

★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - One of the successes of Diego Maradona lies in how it manages to restore some of the luxe hedonism and heady momentum to a story so often shrouded by bloated excess. A keenly self-conscious Maradona pushes himself through sporting triumphs and binge cycles, as the barrio boy from Buenos Aires in the slum city of Naples embraces the fur coats and neon lights.

Adam’s Rib (1949)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Adam and Amanda Bonner, a couple of happily married lawyers who live in an upper-floor apartment in New York, begin to clash when they land on opposite sides of a trial for attempted murder. Adam views the matter in black and white, believing that Doris Attinger broke the law and deserves to be punished, while Amanda delights in teasing out some of the nuances of the case, perceiving an opportunity to rail against gender imbalances...

High Noon (1952)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Will Kane (Gary Cooper), the marshal of a small frontier town in New Mexico Territory, gets married in a small civil ceremony to his beautiful young wife Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly), a Quaker whose imminent plans include a family and a convenience store someplace else. Fully intending to play the doting husband, to that end it is also Kane's last day on the job, and he hands in his badge...

The Rules of the Game (1939)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Instead Renoir produced a bawdy comedy with French airs and graces, which seems to share much in common with so many American films of the late thirties with their loose morals, gender distortions, and hedonistic flushes of romance. The inspirations may have been Marivaux and Beaumarchais, but in style and temperament The Rules of the Game rubs up equally alongside The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.

World Cinema

Toni Erdmann (2016)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Winfried Conradi is so given to practical jokes that he practically depends on them. When he opens the door of his home in the spa town of Aachen, he regales the postman with an elaborate deception featuring look-alike brothers, prison terms, erotic magazines, and mail bombs, tipping the postman for any distress accrued and to make amends for his own strange excesses. He carries a pair of false teeth...

Enola Holmes (2020)

★★ (2 out of 4 stars) - Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), the youngest sibling in the illustrious Holmes family, grew up for all intents and purposes as an only child. At the lavish country house which is now on the cusp of being consumed by nature, she was home-schooled by her mother, who provided an unorthodox education encompassing everything from word games, chess, and jujitsu to chemistry, botany, and lawn tennis played indoors...

Three Men and a Little Lady (1990)

★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - Three Men and a Baby is more than a guilty pleasure, it's one of the defining movies of the 1980s for the easy chemistry between its three leads, and for the panoply of fashion, interior design, and architectural styles it affords, an unconstrained movement of plaids and pastels under the neon lights and glass hallways of their luxe apartment and out in the bustling parks and streets of New York...

The Rules of the Game (1939)

★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Instead Renoir produced a bawdy comedy with French airs and graces, which seems to share much in common with so many American films of the late thirties with their loose morals, gender distortions, and hedonistic flushes of romance. The inspirations may have been Marivaux and Beaumarchais, but in style and temperament The Rules of the Game rubs up equally alongside The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.

What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

★ (1 out of 4 stars) - Vampires on film are best taken seriously. As archetypes, strange and sad figures who permeate given spaces while proving difficult to grasp, they model for us fear, loneliness, and alienation, and are uniquely suited to expressive visual contrasts of light and dark. The great vampire films, Nosferatu (1922), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and more recently Let the Right One In (2008), more than mere formal exercises...

Earthy Anecdotes

Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant

By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle Bay neighbourhood on the east side of Midtown Manhattan was a 'riverside back yard' for the city of New York. Imposing brownstones and squalid tenement housing butted up against the breweries, gasworks, and slaughterhouses which lined the waterfront. Eventually the waterfront would be reshaped by the United Nations headquarters, with dozens of diplomatic missions...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene

One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...

Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford and The League That Got Away

In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...

Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring

On 29 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...

Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne

In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...

Poetry

Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Björk

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, best known...

‘Silentium!’ by Fyodor Tyutchev

Silentium! Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal the way you dream,...

Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)

Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...

Pierrot Through the Arts

Pierrot, the sad clown in white face and loose...

James Joyce

Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita

With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...

The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov and Homer in Maps

When Ulysses was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...

Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha

'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...

Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce

With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...

Obituaries

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the Influential Producer and Dub Pioneer, Dies at the Age of 85

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTNam6GbJYg Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the charismatic producer and restless pioneer...

Charles Grodin, Star of The Heartbreak Kid and Midnight Run, Dies Aged 86

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT6HIfhwtKo The actor, author, and talk show host Charles Grodin...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice, Dies at the Age of 87

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRlEFT-44Ik Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the Supreme Court...

Jean-Paul Belmondo, the Face of the French New Wave, Dies At the Age of 88

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbAMIHLciGk Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor whose crooked nose and raffish...

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PR, Negative Parliamentarism, and Sweden’s Budget Vote

lofven1

On 3 December, Sweden’s Riksdag effectively rejected the budget proposed by Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s government. In response, Löfven announced that he would call a snap election, which is scheduled to take place on 22 March. Löfven cannot officially call for a new vote until 29 December; but this means that, less than three months after going to the polls, Sweden must begin preparing for another general election.

Budgets are variously proposed or announced. In the United States, the President submits a budget request to Congress between each January and February. This request is referred to the House and Senate Budget Committees, who submit budget resolutions which their respective chambers are expected to pass by the middle of April. However, the House of Representatives and the Senate may submit their own budget proposals; and they are not obliged to pass the budget resolutions they are submitted. Even if both chambers do pass budget resolutions stemming from the original request submitted by the President; and even if the differences between the two chambers are then reconciled; the resulting budget resolution is not binding, but serves as a guide to be enacted by Appropriations Committees and appropriations acts. In short, the passing of the budget in the United States is a complex and adversarial process, which has been characterised throughout the Obama administration by gridlock and the prospect of government shutdown.

In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the budget is announced in the House of Commons by the Chancellor before the end of each March and – owing to the tendency for the first-past-the-post electoral system to produce majority governments – is usually passed by parliament with little fuss. Annual tax measures are passed as a matter of course on the very day of the budget announcement; and further resolutions are passed after four days of debate in the Commons and a more limited debate over a single day in the Lords; although the Finance Bill which ratifies these measures will work its way through parliament over the course of the next several months. Whatever, in both the United States and the United Kingdom, the passing of the budget is not fundamental to the formation of government. The situation which has arisen in Sweden – where a budget vote has not only halted parliamentary proceedings, but has effectively brought about a new parliament’s dissolution – owes to Sweden’s electoral system and its process of investiture.

Elections in Sweden to the unicameral Riksdag take place using a modified form of the Sainte-Laguë method of proportional representation. This is a highly proportional electoral system, which in its modified form is slightly weighted in favour of large and medium-sized parties. More, in Sweden there is a 4% election threshold, which a party must reach to secure representation. Back in September, the Feminist Initiative failed to reach this threshold, taking 3.12% of the vote – a significant increase on the 0.4% they managed in 2010, but not enough to secure a seat in the Riksdag. Finally, of the 349 seats on offer, 310 are fixed constituency seats; while the remaining 39 are classed as ‘adjustment seats’, apportioned to ensure that each party in the Riksdag takes a share of the seats proportional with their national share of the vote.

In practise, for the 2014 Swedish general election which was held on 14 September, this system saw the following results:

2014 Swedish General Election Results

Again, the Feminist Initiative, despite a surge of support, missed out on representation in the Riksdag with 3.12% of the vote; the Pirate Party took 0.43%; and a host of parties smaller still took 0.10% or less.

These figures show why Stefan Löfven and his Social Democratic Party have struggled to form a government. The four centre-right parties now in opposition – the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Liberal People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats – have worked together since 2004, as a coalition called the Alliance for Sweden. The Alliance governed Sweden after the general elections of 2006 and 2010, first as a majority then as a minority government, and with Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party serving as Prime Minister. Though governing as a minority after 2010, the Alliance only missed out on a majority in the Riksdag by two seats, and were still able to pass legislation efficiently. In order to challenge the Alliance, the three left-wing parties – the Social Democrats, the Green Party, and the Left Party – had banded together to form a coalition named the Red-Greens. The Alliance took 173 seats to the Red-Greens’ 156, while the far-right Sweden Democrats – shunned by the mainstream parties – entered parliament for the first time with 20 seats.

Though the Red-Greens coalition was dismantled following the defeat of 2010, and the three parties did not campaign together prior to this year’s general election, the fact that the left bloc won more votes in September than the centre-right bloc comprising the Alliance allowed the left bloc – and the Social Democrats, as the party with the most votes by some margin – to form government. This remained the case even though the Social Democrats refused to join with the Left Party in coalition. Instead, forming a coalition with just the Green Party, Löfven stated his intention to woo some of the centrists: in particular, members of the  Centre Party and the Liberal People’s Party.

It is useful for a full understanding of the outcome of the September election to note that it did not mark a return to a Social Democratic hegemony. Indeed – while their share of the vote has fallen significantly over the last twenty years – the Social Democrats have received more votes than any other single party at every Swedish general election going back to September 1917: a history I recounted in the immediate aftermath of this year’s polls. Even in 2006 and 2010, when the Moderate Party saw a surge of support and the Alliance were able to form successive governments, the Social Democrats still led the polling. At the same time, even if the Social Democrats had opted to form a coalition with both the Green Party and the Left Party in September, this would have left them with 43.62% of the vote and 159 from 349 seats – some way short of an overall majority. That they have even been allowed to initiate a government from a smaller coalition suggests a tradition of electoral determination in Sweden which rests upon a reading of the political spectrum and the popular will, rather than a narrow consideration of the mathematics conducive to the strongest government.

With only the Greens affording their immediate support after September’s general election, Löfven’s new government was built upon 37.9% of the vote, holding only 138 from 349 parliament seats. This is a perilous position for any government, and only rendered possible because Sweden follows a system of negative parliamentarism.

The concepts of ‘positive parliamentarism’ and ‘negative parliamentarism’ typically imply the process of investing a government: that is, the process of confirming a new leader and a new government’s right to hold office. In some countries – such as the United Kingdom – there is no formalised investiture vote. Positive parliamentarism indicates that a new leader and a new government must win a majority of parliamentary support for their positions to be confirmed. Negative parliamentarism, on the other hand, indicates that a new leader and a new government will be confirmed provided that a majority of parliament does not vote against them.

So on 2 October, the Riksdag approved Löfven as Sweden’s new Prime Minister; but remarkably, with only 132 members of parliament explicitly voting to approve his position. Setting a record for a lack of support shown towards a new Prime Minister, against the 132 Social Democrats and Green Party members who voted to approve Löfven, all 49 Sweden Democrat members of parliament voted against him, while 154 opposition members – from the Left Party as well as the Alliance – abstained, with 14 members absent.

Barely clinging to the veil of legitimacy, this already looked bleak for the government’s prospects come the budget vote in December. Yet Löfven still hoped to sway the centrists, or to at least win their temporary support so that his first budget could pass. As with the investiture vote, Löfven and the Social Democrat-Green Party governing coalition did not need to win a majority of support for their budget; they just needed to ensure that a majority of parliament did not vote against it. With the budget vote to take place on the first Wednesday of December, on Tuesday Löfven was still seeking cross-party support. His failure to achieve this – with the Alliance remaining resolute – left his government at the mercy of the Sweden Democrats.

The far-right Sweden Democrats – who campaign on a firm anti-immigration ticket; who have gained support significantly through their steadfast opposition to the mainstream, traditional parties; but whose capable leader, Jimmie Åkesson, is currently on a leave of absence, which he began in October, citing chronic fatigue – demanded decisive talks on immigration with Löfven in return for allowing his government’s budget to pass. Löfven refused such talks. On 3 December, separate budgets were proposed by the government; by the Alliance; and by the Sweden Democrats. When the Sweden Democrats’ budget fell in the first round of voting, in the second round, rather than abstaining, they opted to vote with the Alliance. Thus the government’s budget took only 153 votes – with just the Left Party siding with the Social Democrat-Green Party coalition – while 182 members of parliament voted for the budget forwarded by the Alliance.

After the budget vote, there were several slender avenues still open to Löfven. In theory, his government could have continued to function, but following the Alliance budget: a possibility, but a palpable absurdity for a new government. More realistically, he could have sought a new vote after another round of negotiations and an earnest attempt to compromise. Instead, he immediately called a snap election.

The Social Democrats and the Green Party have accused the Alliance of allowing the Sweden Democrats to hold the government to ransom. The impact of the Sweden Democrats at this juncture raises questions for other countries who follow or may wish to follow a proportional electoral system, and face rising powers on the far-right. In the context of electoral reform in the United Kingdom, there have been proposals to use the Sainte-Laguë method towards an elected House of Lords. Meanwhile, an Alternative Vote system has been proposed as a semi-proportional alternative to the use of first-past-the-post at general elections. Those in the UK who would have supported a more proportional system five years ago, when the Liberal Democrats were on the ascendancy on the left of politics, would now face the prospect of proportionality playing into the hands of UKIP.

The Alliance have refuted the Social Democrat and Green Party’s allegations of ‘unprecedented’ irresponsibility. Instead, they have accused Löfven of reneging on early promises and refusing to make compromises. The Sweden Democrats have, in turn, criticised the collective arrogance of the political mainstream. In a press conference immediately following the budget vote, Löfven stated that new elections in March would allow the Swedish public to ‘make a choice in the face of this new political landscape’. The Social Democrats and the Green Party will campaign as one ahead of these elections, hoping that the public will recoil from the perceived obstructionism of the right, and provide them with a strong mandate upon which to govern.

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Update: On 27 December – with the news coming as a surprise just two days after Christmas, following a series of covert inter-party talks – Stefan Löfven’s government announced that a budget deal had been reached with the four parties of the Alliance, thereby curtailing plans for a snap election in March. Löfven’s minority coalition, comprised of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, will therefore remain in power.

Under the terms of the deal – which Löfven dubbed the ‘December Agreement’ – from 2015 until 2022 parties in opposition will abstain from voting against the government’s budget. This prevents the scenario which occurred in early December, when with the two main groupings in parliament voting for their own budget proposals, the right-wing Sweden Democrats effectively held the balance of power – and opted to vote to bring about the government’s defeat. In essence, the deal ensures that a minority Swedish government will be able to function.

As part of the deal, Löfven’s government will follow a modified Alliance budget for the remainder of the year. The government and the Alliance will also seek further cooperation in the areas of immigration policy, pensions, energy, and defence. Presented as a responsible compromise between Sweden’s mainstream parties, the deal serves to castigate and marginalise the Sweden Democrats. It equally sidelines the Left Party, whose leaders were also absent from the announcement.

Speaking alongside the leaders of the Green Party, the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Liberal People’s Party, and the Christian Democrats, Löfven stated ‘Sweden has a proud tradition of solving difficult problems across party boundaries: a tradition which doesn’t exist in any other country’. Annie Lööf, leader of the Centre Party, echoed the sentiment, noting that Sweden has possessed a minority government for all but eight years since the end of the 1970s.

In related Swedish political news, on 10 January Anna Kinberg Batra was confirmed as the new leader of the Moderate Party, officially replacing Fredrik Reinfeldt, who stepped aside following his two terms as Sweden’s Prime Minister.

Christopher Laws
Christopher Lawshttps://www.culturedarm.com
Christopher Laws is the writer and editor of Culturedarm, currently based in Umeå, Sweden.

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