Sweden’s Left Party has threatened to bring down the Social Democrat-led government in a confidence vote expected as early as Monday.
Nooshi Dadgostar, the leader of the Left Party, has threatened to bring down Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s government over a disagreement on proposals to deregulate Sweden’s rental housing market.
The Left Party has stated that it will no longer support the minority government unless the Social Democrats reject proposals that would allow landlords to charge market rates for new rental properties, SVT reports.
The broadcaster notes that the Left leader’s idea has seen broad support from many of its grassroots members.
The populist Sweden Democrats (SD) are also backing a confidence vote against the government, with the party’s group leader in the Swedish Riksdag (parliament) Henrik Vinge stating that he expected the motion to go through. However, it will require support from the Moderates and Christian Democrats.
“There is now a majority in parliament to overthrow the prime minister. We have been striving for this since the government took office. We have raised doubts about the prime minister. We expect it to be tested next week,” Mr Vinge told newspaper Aftonbladet.
“We think it is worth bringing down the government a year before the next election. A year can be quite a long time. It can reduce the problems for many people if we can replace the government a year earlier,” Vinge added.
Demoskop released a snap poll on the issue on Friday and revealed that 47 per cent were in favour of a no-confidence vote to topple the government, with 41 per cent against it.
Polling from earlier this month by SVT and Novus shows that should a new election be called, the Social Democrats would likely win the highest proportion of votes, with around 26.1 per cent. But the two current governing parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens, would only add up to 30.3 per cent of the vote — far from a majority.
Meanwhile, the centre-right Moderates, the Christian Democrats, and the Sweden Democrats would see 47.1 per cent combined — much closer to a majority government.
Earlier this year, the Moderates and the Christian Democrats opened up on the possibility of working with the Sweden Democrats following next year’s scheduled election.