Letter to the editor. The Speaker should wait until after the budget
Quick Look
- The Speaker of the Riksdag, Andreas Norlén, emphasizes the importance of a government getting its budget through.
- The debater suggests that the Speaker should link the prime minister's vote to the budget vote to force political accountability.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Sweden has on previous occasions (2014 and 2018) had governments that were forced to manage the opposition's budget.
The Speaker of the Riksdag, Andreas Norlén, has said that it is important that the incoming government can get its budget through the Riksdag. The then Speaker Per Westerberg said the same before the formation of the government in 2014, but the parties ignored it.
The Social Democrats then ruled on a bourgeois budget. The same thing happened in 2018. For a government to administer the opposition's economic policy erodes its responsibility, and hardly occurs in other parliamentary democracies.
The speaker can now put force behind his words by declaring that he is saving the fourth prime ministerial vote until after the vote on the budget, and that he will then nominate the representative of the party that won it. It would put the content of politics ahead of the game of tactics for government power and force the parties to take responsibility.
Open Questions
- Would such a linking of votes be constitutionally possible?
