The Center Party invites the Red-Greens to a joint situation review

Center leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist invites the red-green parties to a joint situation review, she writes on SvD Debatt.

The meeting should take place before parties start negotiating policies and allocating posts, she emphasizes.

"The aim is for the parties to receive the same information from some of those who have the best overview of Sweden's conditions. We will invite representatives from the business world, trade unions, authorities and organisations," the debate article states.

Political scientist Tommy Möller thinks the invitation is unexpected.

- Anyone can, of course, invite anyone to a meeting, but to me it feels a little unexpected that it comes in parallel with the Speaker's assignment to Magdalena Andersson, he says.

For the second time, the leader of the Social Democrats has been tasked by the Speaker to probe the possibilities for forming a government. The latest probing round ended on Monday without Andersson managing to resolve the knot.

Möller wonders how Thand Ringqvist's initiative will relate to Andersson's upcoming meetings with the parties. Andersson has until Monday 12 October to try to get a government together.

- I don't want to speculate on what possible options she has, but it probably involves taking some kind of command, says Möller about the C leader.

Thand Ringqvist tells Ekot that the parties need to move forward in the talks about how a government should be put in place. At the same time, she states that the party's red line against the Left Party is firm - they will not tolerate a government in which the party is included.

According to SvD, S, V and MP have all accepted the Center Party's invitation.

- We need to see if there is a consensus on fundamental social issues. We know that we are very far from the Left Party, for example, when it comes to solutions for how to get growth, reduce climate emissions and get welfare that works throughout Sweden. But we all have a responsibility to take a first step from a locked situation, says the C leader to Sweden's Radio Ekot.

Oskar Hultin Bäckersten, political scientist at Mälardalen University, is surprised by the C initiative.

- It was probably a rather clever move. Now the Center Party took its own initiative to make something happen, although it is unclear what it will lead to. It's a way to show that you can sit in the same room, he says and continues:

- They prove to be willing to cooperate, but at the same time can stick to the line that the Left Party should not form part of the government.

Hultin Bäckersten sees it as unlikely that the Center Party would switch to Tidösidan instead of being part of Magdalena Andersson's government. He believes that the Center Party's line against the Sweden Democrats is tougher than against the Left Party.

C has been clear that the door is closed to government alternatives where SD gains influence.

- The Center Party has committed itself quite strongly to not being part of a government that is dependent on the Sweden Democrats. They have gone to the election because they are a bourgeois party that leans to the left of the Tidö government, even though they would have preferred to see a center alternative, says Oskar Hultin Bäckersten.