On Wednesday 24 November 2021, everything was brought to a head. In the morning, the Center Party voted to release Magdalena Andersson (S) as Sweden's first female prime minister. After lunch, C cast his votes in the budget vote with the result that the opposition at the time got his proposal through instead. Later in the day, Magdalena Andersson submitted her resignation.
"It is important for me to listen to what everyone wants so that we do not risk an unnecessary split in the party when there is less than a year left until the next election", writes the then party leader Annie Lööf in her book "Also Annie" when she tries to explain why C did what they did. The internal resistance to acting as a support party for S was simply too strong.
Although this Wednesday was particularly dramatic, C's actions in the government issue had already previously created great convulsions. When the Center Party together with the Liberals signed the January agreement with the then S/MP government after the 2018 election, it contained a so-called humiliation clause. The implication was that the Left Party would not have any influence during the term of office, which created great disharmony within V.
When V brought down Prime Minister Stefan Löfven in the summer of 2021, it was because of a proposal for free rent that was run by C.
These are wounds that have not healed to this day, and it is in that light that one must see the abysmal mistrust that exists between C and V when they try to be part of the same government foundation. Right now, the starting points of both parties are completely incompatible. V demands ministerial positions in a future government while C sticks to his red line that V should not be part of a government.
Annie Lööf was once called the queen of no after she repeatedly said no to both Stefan Löfven and Ulf Kristersson as prime ministers. How should Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist act this time?
- My picture is that people are chewing quite a lot of barbed wire and taking Valium now at the Center Chancellery and preparing for a long autumn. You know that the longer it takes, the clearer it becomes how difficult it is to form a government without C and thus the outcome can be better from a C perspective, says Magnus Demervall who today is CEO of the organization Företagarna but was for a long time one of Annie Lööf's closest collaborators.
He has been a key player in several negotiations with the Social Democrats and believes that C, if it is to succeed, must do as it has done in the past - stick firmly to its basic position and policy. At the same time, he assumes that Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist will be exposed to severe pressure from both the outside and the inside.
- It is clear that it is tough to have that pressure on you, but you can say that the Center Party trained quite hard on this eight years ago. Anyone who thinks that it is possible to put pressure on the Center Party by being mean in the media is reading the situation wrong, I think.
The former C leader Maud Olofsson believes that it is undeserved that the Center Party is described as a brake block in Swedish politics. She points to various collaborations that have taken place in recent decades, for example during the financial crisis in the 1990s and during the pandemic.
- If you look historically, it is terribly difficult to claim that the Center Party has been a brake block. It is rather that we have taken on a lot of responsibility over the years, she says.
At the same time, she emphasizes that C is basically a pragmatic party whose overarching goal is to get through as much substantive policy as possible. That is where one must look for the explanation for C abandoning his bourgeois comrades and instead choosing to support S and Magdalena Andersson.
- It is clear that it is a risk, because we have certainly not been someone who has had a fondness for social democrats. But the assessment is that we have greater possibilities to get through the areas that the party has highlighted in the election campaign in a government led by Magdalena Andersson.
Maud Olofsson also thinks that there is too much focus on C's red lines. She believes that all other parties have also set up several ultimate demands and that it ends up in the cloud. For example, she sees the relationship between the Social Democrats and the Moderates more as a wall than as a line.
- If we are to produce a government, everyone must drop their red lines.
There is much at stake for the Center Party in the coming weeks. The outcome of the government negotiations will define the party for a long time to come. Being portrayed as a brake pad again is a risky project.
In order to understand how a party acts in complex path choices, one needs to analyze the situation based on the model of the "three arenas", believes political scientist Mikael Sundström, at Lund University. In short, it is about how a decision affects the party, the electorate and the Riksdag and the cooperation with other parties.
- It is not often that the three arenas are in sync. Today there is no internal threat in the party against Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, she is fairly recently elected and the election went relatively well. But there may be by-elections, so the Center Party must watch over the voters who voted for them. So there are two arenas that are active now, the voters and the parliamentary situation, he says.
The fact that the parliamentary elections are close in time makes it even more important to take the voters into account if they do not want to risk a betrayal debate, says Mikael Sundström.
- If we were three years into the term and a crisis had appeared, you could at least claim that the situation had changed. But now they have spent an entire election campaign emphasizing that they do not want to deal with the outer edges, that they want to move towards the middle.
The centre's position, to the right in economic matters and but far from the Tidö parties in so-called values matters, puts them in a difficult position, says Mikael Sundström.
- Their electorate is against SD, and that makes it difficult to change the sails. At the same time as the position on the right-left scale makes it almost impossible for them to cooperate closely with the Left Party, says Mikael Sundström.
At the same time, he recalls the Centre's motivation for previously entering into collaborations, even if it hurt.
- There, despite great costs, C has chosen to break positions because, according to them, it was in the national interest.
