After a nine-month struggle for survival, Simona Mohamsson dances on stage to Håkan Hellström and the national anthem for underdogs, "Din tid kommr."
"What Simona Mohamsson has done is incredible."
So they all say, in the core of the party. The reserved veteran Lotta Edholm, the jovial party strategist Johan Britz.
And the fixed star, Romina Pourmokhtari. Who stands just below, with shiny eyes and sings along.
"Get up after every bang, you have an angel on your shoulder."
Together they have made the impossible possible.
Spring winter, 2026. Johan Britz sinks down a little in the back seat of the minister's car. He is relaxed now, after the TV duel against the Left Party.
- When I go into a studio like Aktuell, I get nervous. Then I pick up.
He is new as labor market minister but a veteran in the L-top. A political craftsman, the mastermind behind ideas like tax-free ISK savings and liberal bargaining chips on labor immigration. Who had a hand in the game since Lars Leijonborg became the "Leijonkungen" with the Swedish people.
In the fateful year 2026, he is bothered by an idea that sometimes comes up, that an exit from the Riksdag would be a kind of purification process. A way for organized liberalism to start over.
- It's just a guess.
The Liberals have no such organizational power, he believes, but are based entirely on the fact that they sit in the Riksdag.
What happens if they leave?
- Then we will no longer exist as a party.
During the election year, Liberal party leader Simona Mohamsson works almost every waking hour. Rides Säpobil back and forth to meetings. She is in the Riksdag and the Government Office, out in the country. Always with a smile.
She rarely has time for more than a stopover in her new apartment. There was a hasty move into the hot air last spring, from Gothenburg to Stockholm. Last spring, Mohamsson became party secretary, shortly afterwards party leader.
During the 2022 election campaign, she cycled around with a box bike and attached posters to lampposts.
- I could go to Ica with dirty hair, a cap and look like a rat, she says.
That is not the case this year. In the evenings, she sits on her sofa and ponders. She has not had time to install ceiling lights. On the coffee table is an Ipad that lights up the living room, in her hand she holds one of her two mobile phones.
Until one in the morning, she usually stays awake and chats, even though the clock rings again at 06.00.
Who is she writing to?
The Liberals. The People's Party. Free-minded country association. It is not just any party that risks being kicked out of the Riksdag in the 2026 election year.
- Internally, it is a motivating factor. There is a lot of pride, says press secretary Christian Brundu in the cabinet car on the way home late one evening.
In the back of the car sits Johan Britz. The responsibility to those who have gone before weighs on him this campaign, when everything is at stake. Prime Minister Karl Staaff, and the party leader who also became a Nobel laureate, Bertil Ohlin.
- It may sound strange, but they are the ones I think of.
He takes the biggest first: this was the party that helped introduce universal and equal suffrage in this country. Together with the Social Democrats, he does not mention.
"When you go to an election, you say one thing before the election, then the election is carried out - then you say one thing after the election." With customary panache, Johan Pehrson delivered the winged words at the press conference in October 2022, when the Tidö agreement was announced.
Grammatically it was not perfect, but for the Liberal Party the government's presentation was shocking for other reasons. The party board had not even received the text of the agreement in its inbox when the press conference was halfway through.
Decisions that the national meeting had just agreed on with pains were carried over in one fell swoop: the party's no to both anonymous witnesses and visitation zones had become a yes with SD in the boat.
Tidö would both reduce aid and reduce the number of quota refugees. So it continued. Simona Mohamsson, then party board member, saw red.
In an email to the party's review committee, she wrote about the lack of anchoring; that it was "extremely unfortunate, undemocratic and shows a lack of leadership".
Then she herself became party leader.
January 2026. The Liberals fall, in a survey from Ekot, the party receives 1.4 percent of voter support.
Simona Mohamsson doesn't remember the day she changed her foot in the government issue, but she remembers the fall that led up to it, and the difficult interviews.
- No one believed what I said. Everyone thought I would change my mind after the election, she says now about the party's no to SD ministers.
The Liberals did not want Jimmie Åkesson in the government, but SD was happy to continue as a support wheel. At the same time, Mohamsson had been very clear about remaining with the Moderates, who seemed to be planning for a government with the Sweden Democrats in particular.
It was not easy to understand.
The party's strategists had done everything. Consulted sister parties in European Alde and Norwegian Venstre, studied failed liberal election campaigns, researched Swedish public opinion crosswise.
In every scenario after the election, would she be able to stick to not letting SD into the government?
In the end, the decision was Simona Mohamsson's to make.
Seven days after the record low measurement, on February 6, she has decided to "pressure test" Jimmie Åkesson.
"This means, just so you know, that I am putting my token as party leader on the table"
He invites the SD leader to a meeting in his office in the Government Office. He goes there believing that it will be about the teenage expulsions. When Åkesson has settled down, she asks instead: "Shall we get straight to the point?"
Mohamsson proposes a reverse Tidö agreement. Where the Liberals get policies through, against SD being allowed to sit in the government.
She looks Jimmie Åkesson in the eyes and says: "This means, just so you know, that I am putting my token as party leader on the table."
March. Simona Mohamsson runs at a mad pace towards the Riksdag's press center. She and Jimmie Åkesson are there to present a secret agreement. It is her turn now, to throw a national assembly decision overboard, and shock the already tested liberal parties.
The "Sverigelöftet" contains a series of substantive political agreements, but actually has one purpose: to go against the joint decision of one's own party and give SD ministerial posts.
Then comes the hug.
In another world, away on parental leave, the Liberals' fixed star is zeroed in on the television broadcast. Romina Pourmokhtari has known Simona Mohamsson for over a decade, and knows what reshuffle the party leader wants to make.
The hug?
- It felt nothing, she says a couple of months later, back in the election campaign again.
The protagonist takes up a slogan freely from memory, from when the friends "Roro" and "Simme" competed to become Luf chairman: "Simona - the one who gives a hug when you need it."
- I was the one who scared the crap out of people, and she was hugged. So for me it wasn't as shocking as it obviously was for the Swedish people.
They have always walked side by side, but also thought differently about most things.
- If you grow up in Överlida and run an ice cream stand, you have a different view of social problems than if you grow up in Hallonbergen and go to the same school as Rawa Majid's bomb maker, says Pourmokhtari.
She describes the party leader as the big sister - a ray of sunshine like no other - she is happy, laughs, has a lot of energy.
- It is a great advantage if you have to make such a turnaround as she does. If you have the guts to say, yes yes, call me "disgusting Mohammedsson" then. And just drive on.
That turnaround about the Sweden Democrats - they have both done that, social media reminds us of that.
"Very naive to think that Sweden's third largest party would vote for other parties without demanding anything in return. To then sit and negotiate with representatives of a racist party with Nazi roots is unthinkable."
This is what Mohamsson wrote in 2018 regarding bourgeois cooperation with SD. A year later, Romina Pourmokhtari made one of her most famous posts on Twitter:
"Ebba Busch Thor can continue drinking her damn coffee with Åkesson while we pursue our anti-racist policy thank you very much."
They have re-evaluated that.
Now they are going to the polls on the fact that the Liberals are needed, together with the SD.
- Otherwise, Swedish politics will just be a conservative right and a socialist left, says Romina Pourmokhtari.
The duo has become the guarantor of SD getting ministerial posts.
When did the problems start?
In the party there are different opinions about it. Already when Birgitta Ohlsson challenged Jan Björklund someone says. Another pulls the drinking question out of his sleeve. The one that split the Liberal coalition party in 1923. A conflict that left pro-prohibition liberals on one side, and opponents of an alcohol ban on the other. Groupings that have lived on and in modern times call themselves social liberals and demanding liberals.
In any case, many are the defectors who say: when L opened for cooperation with SD, under the leadership of Nyamko Sabuni in 2021.
Labor market minister Johan Britz disagrees.
- We already went wrong in the election campaign in 2010, when we were swept up in the Social Democrats' and Moderates' distancing from SD. When the game of who takes who became more important than the actual politics, he says.
March 22. Nine days after the hug, the party holds an extraordinary national meeting. The L leadership has made the Sweden Promise a cabinet issue, and now the party will vote on confidence in Simona Mohamsson.
But it won't be that easy to have a fateful meeting in the Liberals.
"I can't hear anything," someone complains. "We have to have a meeting where people can talk", roars another, when several representatives do not manage to enter the meeting.
"You cannot have a personal election on a post that is not vacant", notes a third representative and condemns the meeting as such.
After four hours of technical fuss, populists' fondness for formality and a presidium that seems to want to let the soul leave the body, it is clear. Simona Mohamsson has managed with 95 votes in favor, and almost as many blanks, in silent protest.
The days that follow leave heavy names such as Jan Jönsson, Maria Leissner and Malin Sjöberg Högrell in pole vault. It looks like the heart of the party - once again - is breaking apart, and that one half is going up in smoke.
Simona Mohamsson possibly sees the matter differently.
What's happening isn't all bad news. The internal opposition has defrocked itself. And Mohamsson's gang from the years in Luf can steer the party forward.
It has been said that liberal parties are an anomaly. There is a risk that they will implode, as liberal politicians fight for the freedom of the individual against the collective - but are still forced to make collective decisions.
Johan Britz laughs when he hears that.
- It probably has less to do with liberalism and more to do with party culture. With us, those who have gone against the management have long been rewarded.
They have changed that now, notes Britz.
- We are not there, but many of those who have a different idea of how to approach being a political party have left. And that's good.
June. Romina Pourmokhtari's son is barely three months old, and the Liberals' election locomotive, the climate and environment minister, is back in office. Can she sleep?
- He's sleeping! And I lie awake thinking about the party.
She looks out over Visby's straight horizon, smiles from ear to ear and says that it is wonderful to have a cozy warm element on top of her in the middle of the night. With her husband on the left, and the crib on the right, she tries to hide the glare from the mobile phone.
- I always say that "honey, it's just a short period. Soon I'll be back to normal", but it usually doesn't happen like that.
Romina Pourmokhtari also says:
- Speaking of which, I lie there and think about how we are going to stay in the Riksdag, and text Simona.
This is how the duo spends their evenings and nights this election year. With messages, back and forth.
What are they about?
- About how we are going to save this party, says Simona Mohamsson after an interview at a library in Rinkeby.
And not infrequently about how they should deal with different people.
- Romina is one of my closest friends and colleagues. We've been doing this together for a while.
Then she says:
- We are the ones leading this party.
Romina Pourmokhtari nods in agreement, a few weeks later.
- If both me and Simona think that something is a good idea, we feel quite secure that the party also thinks so.
That was already the case when they ruled the youth association. Then they disagreed on almost everything but agreed, before the news headlines were set. Today it works the same way.
- We will come to an agreement. Or, she is the boss, so she gets along with others in management. But in what is then seen in the news headlines, there are both her and me.
In the summer of 2026, Simona Mohamsson's box bike has been replaced by a campaign bus. The job is not the least bit she had imagined, she says. In the event of an election loss, she stands at the far end of the plank.
- On election day, it depends on me whether there is a liberal party left in Sweden's Riksdag or not.
Simona Mohamsson is doing this on borrowed time. She is not "some person who can sit in the Riksdag for four decades". For her, it's all or nothing.
The party leader likes to visualize election night. How she should act if she makes the impossible possible, and saves the party in the Riksdag.
- It's almost like I'd like to go out and give the middle finger to everyone who thought it wouldn't work.
July. Simona Mohamsson spends the Sweden tour at the back of the bus. Time and again, she reminds her colleagues to campaign "into the tile".
Although even the leader has doubts.
The summer has not turned out as she imagined. In SCB's large party sympathy survey in June, the party received 2.5 percent. In DN/Ipsos, L was rounded to 1 percent, another record low.
- Every day I sit and think: Are we doing the right things? It doesn't matter how fast you run if no one else is running with you.
Johan Britz spends a few days off in Roslagen. What is at stake - for him - if the Liberals actually leave?
- It would of course be tragic, and sad. But for my own part, I don't need to keep up with politics, he says.
In another part of the tour bus, Lotta Edholm looks a little chased. Simona Mohamsson has just driven Martin Melin around in a shopping cart inside Willys, to the delight of all the photographers.
She herself is "stiff as a stick", tricks are generally difficult for her.
- It is lucky that we are different.
Lotta Edholm is second deputy party leader, and describes herself as "extremely experienced". A kind of nestor, which the juniors at the top of the party are happy to consult.
The question is: are they listening?
Towards the end of the journey, the bus makes a symbolic stop in Västervik. It was here, in the election campaign in 2002, that the proposal on language requirements for citizenship saw the light of day.
The Social Democrats called the proposal "racist" and so the debate began.
- The voters were for or against a political proposal. That's what you always try to achieve, says Lotta Edholm.
In one month, the party rose to 13.3 percent in the parliamentary election.
In 2026, liberal politicians and civil servants are frantically looking for such an X-factor. They rattle off proposals, the Liberals become a "popcorn machine". Tax-free ISK savings up to SEK 500,000. Raised blood alcohol limit for drunkenness. Prob
