For those of us who know almost nothing about Sweden (except for one "controversial" matter, which I am loath to mention), could you tell us why the Left withdrew their support?
The goverment formed an agreement with 2 liberal parties in order to be allowed to become goverment. One of the conditions from the liberal parties was that the left party was not allowed to have any influence on the politics and that no negosiations where to be made with the left party. Thing was though that the goverment, which included the socialdemocrats and the green party, together with the liberal parties didn't have majority on their own. They needed the mandates from the left party in order to have majority. Beside that the govement agreed to a 74 point list of extreme liberal politics they should implement during the mandatperiod, from the liberal parties. Many of those points were so radical liberal political messurements that the liberals couldn't get the former conservative goverment to agree to. This even though they then was in the goverment together with the conservatives.
The reason for making this unholy allience was said to be to keep the far right (a party that was sprong from the white supremacy party) out.The conservative parties mean that this party no longer hold those values and want to work with them in a goverment.
The left party has worked together with the conservatives to stop the most extreme liberal politics and has had to let others pass since they do prefer a socialdemocratic led goverment to a conservative, but there was one point in this program that the left party said from the beginning that if this was brought through they would withdraw their support for the goverment. In this matter they can not get the conservative to vote against the suggestion, since it is totally in line with the conservative politics, but the conservative has also said from the beginning that if the left party for any reason was open to vote away the goverment, they would do so as well (hence the goverment would fall).
So the point in discussion was free renting market (the owners can set whatever rent they want) for newly build rental housing. Today we have a system with an organisation for those who rent their housing that negosiate rentals with a owners organisation. One problem that complicates the matter further is that if you have low income you can get benefits for rental, which in fact would mean that the rise in rents and extra money to the owners (which, in sweden have enormous winnings already) wouldn't just be paid by the renters but also by the taxpayers.
The mandates to our parlaments was very evenly split between all sides so it was very difficult to form a goverment after the last election. No old partners had majority.
My take on this is:
Thing is that liberal politics in some senses are to the right of the most conservatives politics and a socialdemocratic goverment that implements politics to the right of the conservatives, just isn't right... It should never have been. Everyone talks about that the problem is the new ultra right party, but to me, the problem is the socialdemocrats. Any and al cooperation they can see is with themselves in goverment. If they really was troubled by the ultra right they could have given the support to our largest conservative party to form a goverment. Together those two parties has majority. They then could have made a program , like the one the liberal party made with them. With politics that they wanted the conservatives to implement or politics that they would not be allowed to change during the mandat period. This way they would have shattered the ultra rights party's goals of forming an alliance with the conservatives (which they now have done) and on the same time been able to have politics much closer to what their voters want. And it would have been a much more stable governemt.
The Socialdemocratic party unfortunatly still lives in the reality when they had majority on their own and their respect for other parties and their self awareness are very limited.
