While everyone's attention was focused on how center leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist reluctantly rammed her head into the center wall, other things happened in silence. S, V, C and MP now meet and talk politics with each other.
Thus, both the Center and the Left Party have made concessions.
The fact that Nooshi Dadgostar agrees to discuss politics without having received promises of ministerial positions means that the Left Party has moved on. Previously, the V-line was that it was pointless to discuss the political content without first settling on which parties should be in government.
At the same time, the Center accepts - after the hope of the center has definitely been extinguished - that a government must be based on S, V, MP and C. As a consequence, the Center also discusses government policy with V.
In recent days, the buzz has been about the Center being able to switch sides and accept a moderate-led government - unless SD is part of it.
The picture has been set from both left and right. By portraying the threat of continued right-wing government, the Social Democrats want to pressure V to drop its government demand, while the right-wing and business lobbyists put pressure from their side. Center sources have also contributed to the spin, to give the impression that the Center has somewhere else to go if the party does not get its way.
On Tuesday, that possibility was killed - for who knows what time in the order - again by Thand Ringqvist and other leading center parties. It has never really been an option, it would be deceiving the Center's electorate in an issue that concerns the party's fundamental identity - the distancing from SD is much more than a red line for the Center, it is the core of the party's interpretation of what it is to be a liberal in today's Sweden.
The Sweden Democrats have – quite unintentionally – given the central leadership traction by delving into whether Swedishness is about skin color and place of birth or cultural assimilation. A debate where all positions in the red-green eyes are more or less racist. In that situation, it is not very tempting to flirt with a right-wing collaboration that includes SD.
It is also sad news for moderate leader Ulf Kristersson - who, on behalf of the speaker, will now probe the possibility of pulling the Center over to his side. A page that inevitably includes a collaboration with Jimmie Åkesson. Kristersson's chances of success are – as he himself noted – very small. The moderate leader seems to be coldly counting on the Speaker next week to organize a vote in which Kristersson is also voted down.
If that happens, the by-election is just one vote away. Perhaps that is what is required to resolve the crucial knot, the one about which parties will receive cabinet titles in Magdalena Andersson's government.
Now a beauty contest is being fought as to who has been the most constructive. Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist claims that the Center has done everything the party can to resolve the government issue and that if there are by-elections, it is V and MP who bear the responsibility - with their demands for government participation.
The Left Party says it wants to compromise and make concessions to the Center on all conceivable points - except the ministerial issue. When the Left Party's group leader Samuel Gonzalez Westling appealed to the Center before the Riksdag vote, he pulled the SD card and said that C and V together "stand safe in one thing: Human value".
Which of the red-green parties will bear the dog's head if the nervous negotiations for a fourth vote get out of hand and crash into a by-election? That's what the ongoing beauty pageant is all about.
Read more:
Kristersson on the probe mission: "It will be difficult"
