The week before the parliamentary election, the winds have turned for the Liberals. For the first time since 2022, the party is above the Riksdag barrier in several polls.
Torkild Strandberg, liberal municipal board chairman in Landskrona for 20 years, knew it.
- If you have been doing this for a long time, you develop an ability to feel which way the wind is blowing.
Landskrona is not a big city, but for Torkild Strandberg it takes time to walk through the center.
On Rådhustorget, the L veteran in a herringbone patterned jacket is stopped by middle school boys who want to take selfies.
- I'm a big, big fan. Many thanks for everything you do, shouts pensioner Pia Aaseby.
Two ladies on pole walking also want his attention.
Like a living election poster, she rambles on about what she thinks Strandberg has achieved: housing construction, reduced crime, companies moving in.
Torkild Strandberg is cozy.
- I haven't written the script for this, he jokes.
While the Liberals on the national level are fighting to stay in the Riksdag, Landskrona has become known as one of the party's strongest strongholds.
In the 2022 election, L won the most with 37.78 percent of the votes.
The successes are usually attributed to the "Torkild effect".
Landskronaliberalern's website has the address www.torkild.se. Neither slogans nor election promises are visible on the local election posters. Just a portrait of the town's strongman.
- If you compare with those that have text, I'm not entirely sure that it adds that much. If I must express myself diplomatically, says Torkild Strandberg.
After decades of social democratic rule, the Liberals took over power in the old shipyard city in 2006. Together with the Moderates and the Green Party, the party formed a minority coalition, with the Sweden Democrats as the wave master.
Since the last election, the three-leaf clover has its own majority and no longer needs SD's support. But the image of Torkild Strandberg as the first liberal to have let SD into the heat has stuck.
He himself does not share the description. After the 2006 election, when both the Liberals and the SD got around 20 percent, according to him, it was about respecting the voters and not letting the Social Democrats stay after the election loss.
- Our line was simple: We voted for proposals we thought were good and against those we thought were bad, regardless of where they came from, he says.
With similar reasoning, he defends that the Liberals have opened up to being in government with SD.
- We needed to be clear on the government issue. Otherwise, the electoral movement would have been stuck in hypothetical questions instead of substantive politics.
When the Liberals took power in Landskrona, the city still bore traces of the industrial and shipyard closures of the 80s and 90s. The jobs had disappeared. At the same time, many foreign-born and refugees moved in and found it difficult to support themselves.
According to Torkild Strandberg, he was clear from the start in describing Landskrona's problems.
- We had a huge dependency on benefits, abysmal school results and a violent crime similar to what we have seen in Sweden in recent years.
Today it looks better, he says. The city has received more attractive housing, the subsistence allowance has been halved and Landskrona has strengthened its position in national measurements of the business climate.
When Strandberg is now running for a sixth term as chairman of the municipal board, he wants to continue on the beaten path.
But not everyone is impressed. Jonas Esbjörnsson (S), chairman of the Landskrona labor municipality, believes that Torkild Strandberg has normalized SD and that 20 years with the Liberals in power have created "deep tears in the city".
- At the same time that the municipality has a surplus of 1.4 billion, we see how care for the elderly is on its knees. It shows pure nonchalance towards welfare, says Jonas Esbjörnsson.
A recent poll from Helsingborgs Dagblad and the analysis company Perspetivo shows that S has overtaken L in Landskrona. In the survey, the party backs down to 26.4 percent.
Torkild Strandberg snorts at the numbers and believes that in the end it is only the election results that count.
What would it mean for the Liberals in Landskrona if the party does not pass the Riksdag barrier? Nothing, he says.
- Although it is clear that without a national sounding board, we have to work in a different way than we are used to.
Just as he is about to go back to his office in the town hall, a player from the football team Landskrona Bois comes up and takes him by the hand.
- In the dressing room the other day we said that now everyone is voting for Torkild!
