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Editorial

It isn’t easy to understand what happened in Sweden after the September 2018 elections. What we really need to do is take a closer – albeit brief - look. On the same day, both the national and local elections were held. This marked a turning point for Sweden - a model country in terms of welfare and competitiveness - that saw an increase in local sovereignists. For example, the new anti-migrant right - Sverige Demokraterna (SD) headed by its young leader Jimmie Akesson, who has turned into a xenophobe in a double-breasted suit - obtained almost 18% of the votes in Parliament. This vote just goes to show how difficult it would have been for anyone to govern without taking into account the SD’s proposals: mass refusals, closed borders and letting the people decide on future relations with the European Union. What’s going on in Stockholm? In the city of the Mayor we’ve interviewed this month, the incumbent centre-left coalition - made up of Social Democrats, the left-wing party, the Greens and Feminist Initiative - although still the largest bloc, has lost the majority.
Anna König Jerlmyr – leader, in the city, of the Moderates, a party founded in 1904 by a group of conservative Swedish MPs and that in 1970 abandoned the positions of the nationalist right and more recently came to adopt the stances of liberal conservatism - has managed to very quickly form the city government, bringing the local Greens party over to her side.
Let’s take another little step back: in 2004 in Sweden the Alliance for Sweden was established, bringing together the four non-Socialist parties (the Moderates, the Liberals, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats). In 1979, the Moderaterna (as the Moderate Party is often called) became the largest party in the coalition and in 1986 its new leader, Carl Bildt, was elected, leading the party to victory in 1991. Bildt became Prime Minister in 1994. It was indeed this coalition that obtained, in 2018, the quasi-majority in the Stockholm City Council; and the Alliance surpassed, at the national level, albeit by a hair, the outgoing Social Democrat-Greens coalition. And yet while in the city the clever Anna König Jerlmyr has managed to immediately form a government and get elected mayor of the City Council, at the national level the inconceivable has happened. For the first time in history, newly appointed Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, the 54-year-old leader of the same Moderate Party as König, did not win the confidence vote in the Swedish Parliament. What happened? The Alliance split when the news came out that Kristersson had sought the outside support of the Sweden Democrats. At that point, both the Centre and the Liberals withdrew their support and Kristersson ended up with just the votes - which were insufficient – of his party, the Christian Democrats and the Sweden Democrats. A good 4 months after the vote, in January 2019, a national government was formed, with a majority bringing together some of the parties of the two traditional blocs into a large, entirely new coalition with the Social Democrats, the Greens, the Centre Party and the Liberals. So, of the two spokespeople of the Moderates, who is the best politician? We gave this long-drawn-out introduction just to show you who Anna König Jerlmyr is. In her year of government, our Mayor for November has already achieved significant results: she lowered taxes, invested in security measures and guaranteed that the city was as clean as possible. Everything the Italians dream of happening in their own cities. Sure, things were already pretty good in Stockholm. For example, just a few days ago the city was ranked third worldwide in terms of air quality, just after Brisbane and Salvador. This certainly isn’t something that can be accomplished in just a few months. However, at the same time, we can’t forget the enormous social problems that Sweden has had to deal with in recent years and that have deeply affected the capital. In Europe, Sweden hosts the greatest number of refugees with respect to its population. According to UNHCR data, in 2016, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, Sweden peaked at 23.4 refugees for every 1000 inhabitants. In 2015 more than 160,000 requests for asylum were registered. Historically, Sweden has always promoted policies of openness to encourage the process of integrating resident foreigners through employment.
However, starting from the 2000s, these policies have proven to be not enough to ward off phenomena that are typical of other European cities: like ghettos populated almost exclusively by foreigners, where unemployment and petty crime rates are on the rise. In May 2013 popular revolts erupted in the Stockholm suburbs, where for 5 nights in a row the local population rose up and engaged in violent clashes with the police. According to one BBC headline: the revolts in Stockholm shine the spotlight on inequality in Sweden. All this tension culminated on 7 April 2017, when on the pedestrian walkway in Drottninggatan, right in the centre, a truck barrelled through a crowd, killing 5 people. The attack in Stockholm was perpetrated by an Uzbek man whose request for asylum had been denied and who declared he had acted in the name of ISIS. The new Swedish government immediately adopted a more rigid stance on immigration. For instance, according to the government programme, a mandatory Swedish language exam will be introduced as a prerequisite for citizenship. And in our interview, König herself defines knowledge of the Swedish language as essential to integration. Stockholm is and will always be an ‘open and inclusive’ city, according to the Mayor: a city that takes people in and welcomes everyone. A city where one thing is for sure: local politics works ‘so that all citizens actively participate in public life.’ Regardless of violence and extremisms. The symbol we have chosen for our cover is the red horse of Dalahästar. Stockholm has many symbols, from the elk to the horns of the Vikings. The Dala horse, this is its name in English, has ancient origins. According to some, it is inspired by Sleipnir, the horse of Odin, but unlike Sleipnir it does not have eight legs. Another apocryphal legend says that it became a national toy in 1716 when soldiers loyal to King Charles XII, headquartered in the Dalarna region began to carve the toys as a gift for their guests. Yet the first references to the sale of wooden horses date back almost 400 years, more precisely to 1623, when, it is said that the craftsmen, given the icy cold that strikes Sweden in winter, in front of their fireplaces, with a knife, carved the resulting wood of the pendulum clocks, to make toys for their children. Today's Dala horse is still a handmade object, made of pine wood. At least nine different people contribute their skills to the creation of each horse. The horse is accompanied by an ABBA verse, their song 'I am the city', ‘I am the city. The famous hotels and the cocktail bars and the funny smells and the turmoil the cars and the people, the parks and the squares that you see all the sounds that you hear and the air that you’re breathing is me’. No doubt they were talking about Stockholm.

Mariella Palazzolo