Sweden's Magdalena Andersson resigns hours after appointment as first female / Swedish PM Magdalena Andersson resigns hours after taking job

Swedish PM Magdalena Andersson resigns hours after taking job

 

Sweden’s first female prime minister steps down after suffering a budget defeat in parliament.

 

BY CHARLIE DUXBURY AND ALI WALKER

November 24, 2021 6:34 pm

https://www.politico.eu/article/swedish-pm-magdalena-andersson-resigns-hours-after-taking-job/

 

STOCKHOLM — Even by the messy standards of Swedish politics over recent months, Wednesday was a turbulent day in the Stockholm parliament.

 

After just seven hours as Sweden’s first female prime minister, Magdalena Andersson resigned on Wednesday evening after her budget failed to win enough lawmaker support to be passed, with parliament instead backing a spending plan penned by her adversaries — the center-right Moderate Party and Christian Democrat Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats.

 

The Greens, the junior party in Andersson’s Social Democratic Party-led coalition, then quit the government, saying the opposition budget did not contain enough of their policies.

 

According to Swedish conventions, when a coalition party quits government the prime minister is expected to resign.

 

“I have met the speaker of parliament and asked to be relieved of my position as prime minister,” Andersson told a press conference on Wednesday evening. “However, I also told him I remain ready to be prime minister but for a Social Democratic single-party government.”

 

It was a dramatic day for Andersson. On Wednesday morning she narrowly secured the votes she needed to be appointed prime minister, but doubts were already being raised about whether she could get her budget through parliament at a vote slated for the afternoon.

 

When the government’s erstwhile allies, the Center Party, said it would not back Andersson’s budget, it was all but inevitable that her spending plan would be rejected.

 

The head of the Green Party, Märta Stenevi, said her party could not govern using that budget.

 

“We have sought to be in government to deliver green policies, it is not our job to administer a budget negotiated by the Sweden Democrats,” Stenevi said.

 

It is unclear what will happen next. Analysts suggested the speaker of parliament, Andreas Norlen, may now ask parliament to vote on Andersson’s candidacy as prime minister again, this time as head of a one-party government. It was also unclear when such a vote might happen.