Analysis: "The January agreement can be dismantled part by part"

Most upset today are the center parties. Their heart-questioning input tax deduction is the big funding item when the parliamentary majority runs across the government for more money to the country's municipalities. The entry tax deduction is a reduction of the employers' fees for companies that employ young or new arrivals. The Center Party calls it a tax cut for the country's companies, the political opponents say it is a meaningless subsidy that does not create more jobs.

No matter what, the Center Party will now demand compensation from the other January parties. The entry deduction was one of the Center Party's main requirements in the negotiations with the Social Democrats a year ago.

Another alternative is that the January parties make another attempt to push through the entry tax deduction in the next budget. It could go, but the risk is, of course, that the majority of the parliament will again tear it up. The same applies to the development period, the new variant of the free year, for which the Environmental Party is warming. The Liberals 'teaching assistants have also been given a foothold in the majority's settlement in Parliament, as has the Social Democrats' Innovation Council.

In total, there are four points in the January agreement that are partially or completely stopped by the Riksdag. To this can be added this autumn's turbulence around the reform of the employment services, where the government was finally forced to back on another heart issue for the Center Party; that the whole reform should rest on the Law of Freedom, LOV.

Chaos privatization, called the Left Party leader Jonas Sjöstedt the reform and was supported by both the Moderates and the Christian Democrats and the Sweden Democrats for a lack of confidence in the Labor Minister.

The Center Party is thus the party in the January collaboration that has so far been hit hardest by the majority's actions in the Riksdag. If this continues, the ultimate consequence may be that the party leaves the January collaboration, but we are not there yet.

At the same time, it is a paradox that both the Moderates and the Christian Democrats would probably have given the Center Party similar concessions about Annie Lööf a year ago instead choosing to release Ulf Kristersson as prime minister.

Much of what is happening in the Riksdag right now is thus a political game, which seeks to undermine confidence in the government and the January parties. Nevertheless, every parliamentary majority is free to exercise its mandate. Stefan Löfven and the January parties cannot do anything but adhere to it.

The alternative is to call for extras or to resign, but so far the political retreats have not been significant enough to drive such a development. The issues where the majority have run over the government are also of such a nature that it would hardly be possible for Stefan Löfven to use them as arguments to call for an extra election.

A possible way out for the January parties would be to invite the Left Party to the negotiating table. But neither the Center Party nor the Liberals will accept it. In that case, their liberal reforms, which are a red carpet for the Left Party, risk being hit on the foot.

Still, what we see now can only be the beginning of an increasingly ferocious opposition, which has been bloodied by its successes, and who therefore want to move on in its attacks on the government to try to push the borders further.

According to the plan, the January agreement will be valid until the parliamentary elections in 2022, but several points have already been completely or partially stopped by the opposition. Part by part, the settlement can now be about to be dismantled by the political opponents in Parliament.

So a perfectly reasonable question to ask is how many points of the original 73 will be left as the election approaches. The question is also where the pain limit goes for Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. The government's authority is undermined for every setback in Parliament, although Löfven as a social democrat is likely to appreciate some of the political changes that the opposition is now forcing on him.

It is another paradox in the political game right now, that the changes that M, KD, SD and V are pushing through policy matters for government policy in a direction that is more in line with traditional social democratic politics.

It would be an irony of fate if Löfven and LO would eventually have to thank their political opponents for helping to stop the Social Democrats' deleterious parts of the January agreement.