The Center Party's red line against the Left Party is being questioned

In Sunday's Agenda, SVT's presenter repeatedly asked Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist (C) about why she wants to maintain a red line against the Left Party's participation in a new government. Regardless of how the question was asked, the answer was that it is due to the great distance between C and V in various factual matters. But the presenter missed that she did not at all address the Left Party's ability to govern or its communist roots, reasons that her party previously cited.

But if the Centre's red line is only rooted in differences in views on various issues, the distance between the two parties is exactly the same regardless of whether one takes one or the other party as a point of departure. The fact that the Left Party accepts to sit in the same government as the Center is due to seeing a bourgeois-influenced red-green government as a less bad alternative than continued Interim Government. The center party regards V as just as harmful as SD, but does not receive support for the formation of a government that keeps both parties out of government power. Therefore, the Center must choose a side.

In addition, the difference between the Center Party and the Green Party on certain substantive issues is as great as between C and V, but still the parties accept each other. It is also notable that today's left party is in many respects similar to the social democracy that the Center Party was able to collaborate with a few decades ago.

The best and probably only way forward will be to keep the question of who will be part of the government open until the four parties have negotiated a government program and a budget. They still have to do that regardless of who will become ministers.

In such a negotiation, the left-wing parties know that they cannot get support from either the Center Party or the Social Democrats for particularly far-reaching left-oriented demands. It will be the price the party has to pay for taking the step from powerless support party to government party for the first time.

It is also obvious that the Left Party will be kept away from the most important cabinet positions and can hardly even count on appointing any ministry heads. In addition, the Center Party can probably count on getting the same number of ministers as the Left Party despite having fewer parliamentary seats (25 versus 30).

If the Center, after a successful negotiation, where everyone was forced to compromise, maintains its red line, Magdalena Andersson (S) will not become prime minister. My conclusion is that the Center Party has more to gain than to lose by accepting, after tough negotiations, to join MP and V in a government led by Magdalena Andersson.