War cabinet in Israel - when will Swedish politicians get their act together?

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Wolfgang Hansson  

Wolfgang Hansson 

This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.  

Published 2023-10-13 21.05  

Columnists  

In recent years, Benjamin Netanyahu has acted as one of the most irresponsible leaders of the democratic world. 

After the Hamas attack, he has finally agreed to form a war cabinet.  

When will Swedish politicians get their act together and see that Sweden might need something similar to solve its crises?  

Many have described it as a war-like state in Sweden, where daily shootings, explosions and arson are only the external evidence of how organized crime eats into the body of society and has become a systemic threat in the same way that the mafia once was in Italy .  

On top of that, we have the most serious security policy situation in our immediate vicinity since World War II.  

Two women were killed after a shooting in Tullinge on Friday night. Photo: Blue light images 

We are also facing a gigantic climate change in society, where a basic condition for succeeding in reducing emissions is that we get a long-term plan in place for how Sweden's sharply increasing electricity needs are to be solved.  

Instead of trying to solve these multiple crises with common thinking power and determination, the party leaders engage in a "blame game" where they constantly try to place the responsibility on the other side for the situation that has arisen. When the truth is that all the parties that have been in charge of government for the past 20-30 years are behind the failures we see now in terms of lack of integration, gang violence and unsafe energy supply.  

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M), and Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch (KD) at a press conference after Thursday's meeting of the National Security Council in which all the party leaders of the Riksdag participated, together with a large number of heads of authorities. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT  

With regard to Sweden's security policy situation, the Moderates and the Social Democrats finally succeeded in producing a united facade around NATO accession. They should be able to do something similar when it comes to other crises.  

If there is any time since the Second World War that Sweden would need a broad and strong government, it is now.  

Zero experience  

Instead, we have yet another weak minority government that is completely dependent on a populist extreme party. The Sweden Democrats, with zero experience of what it's like to govern a country, do not have to take responsibility for the proposals they push through. That's not to say that all are necessarily bad.  

When Benjamin Netanyahu formed his latest government around the turn of the year, he turned to Israel's most extreme parties, the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the settlers. Instead of creating national unity, he fueled the internal division in the country. Ultimately, it was that division that paved the way for Hamas's surprise attack to succeed.  

Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Abir Sultan / AP 

The very day after the massacre in southern Israel, the opposition offered to form a coalition government. It took Netanyahu several days before he agreed. Namely, the demand was that he should pause the legal reform that Israel has argued about all year, to give politicians who accused Netanyahu of corruption more power at the expense of the Supreme Court. Something many Israelis saw as a dismantling of democracy. 

Now Israel stands united before the difficult ground offensive that awaits and which could be decisive for the survival of the state. 

Sweden may not experience the same existential threat as Israel, but many Swedes, both experts and ordinary people, describe it as being at war against the gangs.  

Long-term rules of the game  

From so-called ordinary people, I constantly hear comments like "this is completely crazy" or "this has to end - now". 

There are of course no guarantees that it would succeed even if the two largest parties were to form a coalition government. But the focus would hopefully end up on solving the problems instead of constantly blaming each other.  

S and M are essentially the same on a number of policy areas and are both used to compromise.  

A man was killed and a woman and a child were injured in a shooting in Västberga shortly before 01 o'clock on Wednesday night. Photo: Lotte Fernvall  

Several of Sweden's crises are dependent on long-term decisions that are not torn up after each term of office. If S and M jointly lay out the rail, it will be very difficult to break it up after the next election. There is a chance that the country will get the long-term rules of the game that many in society are asking for, for example, to dare to invest in expensive investments in new energy or to bring about long-term measures to reduce new recruitment to gangs and threats to the welfare society.  

 

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) and Social Democrats party leader Magdalena Andersson (S) at the fall's first party leader debate in the Riksdag. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT  

 

Another advantage is that the Swedish people would at least get the feeling that those who rule are making an effort for the good of the country rather than to guard their own positions of power.  

 

So much of today's politics is characterized by short-termism, surviving until the next election. Many politicians seem to have forgotten why they sit where they sit. 

 

Offensive irresponsibility  

 

Here is another frightening parallel of how bad things can go.  

 

In our great neighbor to the west, the Republican Party is currently showing evidence of shocking irresponsibility.  

 

The US government will shut down in a month if a new budget is not passed in Congress. One of the USA's main allies is party to a new war in the Middle East with the proliferation risks it entails. Russia continues to challenge the liberal world order in Ukraine. We have China's threat to Taiwan.  

 

Then the Republicans fire their Speaker and cripple the work of Congress. When they have to choose a new one, the chaos continues and they cannot agree. 

 

Even in the face of a war, the Republicans can't get their act together. The question is whether Sweden's politicians are able to do it.