The development of events in recent days has caused great disappointment within the Left Party. Last week's talks between the four red-green parties were seen as promising. After the announcements from, in turn, Jimmie Åkesson (SD), Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist (C) and Magdalena Andersson (S), the situation is completely different.
The anger towards S and C is widespread and the V leadership is worried that it will further deteriorate relations between the red-greens. In an internal email, communications manager Anna Herdy urges everyone to refrain from making statements in the media.
"We are in a very sensitive situation in the formation of the government. In order for us to be able to stick to our line and put pressure on the Center Party, it is important that we stick together and are coordinated in our communication," the email says.
One who nevertheless speaks out is Salar Rashid, chairman of the Left Party in Skärholmen - where V became the second largest party in most districts. He feels that people he meets have become tired of the political game surrounding the formation of a government.
- I think it has stirred up significantly more emotions here in the extreme how C has kidnapped this whole process. The fact that we are not allowed to be part of a government is embarrassing, he says.
DN's V sources at the top of the party are equally frustrated. They believe that if the red-green side is to have any chance of progressing, the Center Party must first make up its mind. Go to the right and form a bourgeois government that needs the support of SD? Or seek a solution together with S, V and MP?
V perceives it as "blackmail" that the Center demands that both S and M present political offers on how Sweden should be governed.
The left-wing parties now fear that C will drop its red lines against the SD: then the formation of the government is already decided in Kristersson's favor. Several central V sources coldly expect that this may be the case.
Another option that worries the leftists is that C pressures S into an agreement that will be even more right-wing than the January agreement. The disappointment within V is also about the Social Democrats, as one source puts it, "playing along in this C game".
My Kårlycke, chairman of Ung Vänster, thinks that S is walking straight into a centre-party trap. She dismisses Magdalena Andersson's government alternative as alien to reality - or as she says: "delulu".
- They must stop this self-harming behavior where they do exactly what the Center wants.
In addition, the government constellation that the S leader proposed on Sunday is a "right-wing government", according to My Kårlycke.
- And we will never, ever accept that.
Despite the high stakes, there are no thoughts within the V management about backing down themselves, according to DN's experience. The requirement for ministerial positions is fixed. Rather, the stubbornness has been reinforced by external pressure.
Before the congress last spring, Salar Rashid's local association wrote a motion stating that V should not put ministerial posts ahead of politics. Today, Salar Rashid says that he has great confidence in the line of the party leadership.
- One thing is crystal clear: We want our mandates and our votes to count. We can still think that policy matters should decide, but this has completely gotten out of hand, he says.
Another who previously opposed ultimate demands for ministerial positions is Sara Carlsson Hägglund, chairman of V in Gothenburg. Now she and the district are closing in behind the party leadership:
"If the Left Party is to support a government, we must also be part of it. Now the ball is in the Center Party's court, which needs to take a position on which political direction they want to see," she writes in a comment to DN.
Even if the V leadership would like to change their red lines, they are held back by the decision made at the congress last spring. The only formal possibility to change the line on the ministerial issue is to call an extraordinary congress, which according to the statutes must take place two months in advance.
The other possibility is that the V leadership simply runs over Congress. It would sit very far inside, assesses a V veteran with long experience of the party's inner life. Admittedly, substantive political objectives have sometimes been dropped in negotiations anyway, but the ministerial requirement is of a different kind: very specific and at the same time fundamentally strategic.
Young Vänster's chairman My Kårlycke has also previously stated that policy should come before ministerial posts. But now she thinks the V management is doing the right thing by sticking to its demands.
- Obviously, the tools that have been used in the past have not worked, and then it is good that you also test new ones. We absolutely do not intend to settle for some lousy middle-of-the-road policy, she says.
