ANALYSIS: "Stefan Löfven's power play now bears fruit"

In recent years, the political uncertainty has been great about several of Parliament's budget decisions.

Immediately after the 2014 election, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's first budget fell when the Swedish Democrats voted for the alliance's budgetary motion. After a government crisis, Löfven succeeded in gaining further room for maneuver, but was forced, despite the ruling country, based on the political opponents' economic policies.

Throughout the term of office, the threat hung over him for the alliance's policies to be voted on with the help of the Swedish Democrats. Only through the unwillingness of the Center Party and the Liberals to overthrow the government did he manage to get through his politics.

The 2018 election then created a total political deadlock. The government's budget in the autumn was again voted down, this time because SD chose to support the joint M / KD budget. So again, Löfven was forced to govern the country based on other parties' economic policies.

But now the situation is different. The government is admittedly a minority government, but with the cooperation of the Center Party and the Liberals, there is no prerequisite for the opposition in Parliament to cut the budget.

To succeed in this, the entire opposition must unite behind a common counter-proposal and it is of course completely unrealistic in that the bourgeois parties have split.

As the situation is now, the Left Party must agree with the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats. Hardly likely.

Stefan Löfven's power play in the government issue thus bears fruit when the Riksdag will now deal with the budget. Through the cooperation with the Center Party and the Liberals, he does not have to worry about the budget being at risk of falling.

The truth is, moreover, that there is not even a will to agree among the opposition parties.

That the Left Party could settle with the opposition parties on the right is so unlikely that all parties instead are now investing everything in profiling their own politics. No one is thinking about which proposals could possibly gather a majority in Parliament. Now it is all about showing the voters what the party really stands for.

This is most evident for the Left Party, which after several years of cooperation with the government, has now been placed on green paper for the first time. Their budget motion appears as a single long wish list where they have also collected all the tax increases they can come up with.

However, completely isolated on the left in Swedish politics, one can already conclude that not a single one of their proposals will go through.

Opposition parties on the right are a bigger unified option, but neither can they create any majority behind their proposals. Here, too, the focus is entirely on party profiling.

Sure, these parties have, on an overall level, a somewhat so common approach in tax policy. But in the autumn's most symbolic tax issue, the value tax, they are still deeply divided. The moderates say yes to the government's proposal to abolish the defense tax, while both the Christian Democrats and the Swedish Democrats say no. So neither is there a united front on this issue.

The only area where the opposition is actually something so when agreed is the issue of more money for the municipalities. The alarm reports on the economic situation in many municipalities have been close lately and are obviously something the parties have taken on.

All opposition parties demand that state grants to municipalities be increased more than the government has proposed. However, the parties land at different levels. The disagreement over the whole also means that there is no basis for agreement here. Parliamentary parties cannot withdraw an individual part of the budget, such as increased grants to the municipalities, but must agree on the whole.

However, the new political situation creates some interesting links across party borders. For example, both the Left Party and the Swedish Democrats want to raise the a-cash and the guarantee pension. The left party also thinks, like SD and KD, that the value added tax should remain.

However, there are the greatest similarities between the budget motions of the Moderates and the Swedish Democrats. Both parties, for example, want to lower gasoline taxes, reduce aid and save on migration policy.

But no conservative block will be manifested in this autumn's budget decision. The various parties learn to vote on their own budget motions and when they fall, they will in all likelihood cast their votes.

This means that Stefan Löfven and his finance minister can be calm. This time there is no sign of anything other than the government's budget going through Parliament.