Just hours before Sunday's party leader debate in Agenda, M, KD, L and SD chose to present a joint proposal on migration policy.

The proposals mean, among other things, that the basis for residence permits for humanitarian reasons will be limited, that language requirements will be tightened and that relative immigration will be sharply limited.

A quarter reserved

It is the first proposal signed by all four parties.

But within the Liberals, the decision was not well received by everyone.

More than a quarter of the members of the Riksdag have reserved themselves against the proposal.

- What I reacted to was that you went forward as a quartet.

I have always said that the Liberals should advance as a single party in the center and that others may then support if they find it appropriate.

This also applies to the migration issue, says Member of Parliament Barbro Westerholm (L) who was one of them.

According to several leading Liberals, the reservation in the parliamentary group, which is a protest against the decision, is not about the proposals themselves but about the initiative being taken together with SD.

According to Joar Forssell, who sits on the party board, the action sends the wrong signals.

- In the situation that L is now in, go out with a proposal that divides the party is not what we need, Forssell says.

At the end of March, the Liberals decided in their party council to be part of a bourgeois government after the parliamentary elections next year, even though it requires the support of the Sweden Democrats.

"Unjustified criticism"

Robert Hannah believes that Sunday's joint proposal is completely in line with the party's new direction.

- I think it is unjustified criticism.

We have already taken a party council decision in which two thirds of the council support this line, which we are now using.

It will only be strange if the Liberals are to say no if three other parties want to do something in common with their own policies, says Hannah.

- What is happening now is that the Sweden Democrats will be a support party for the Liberals' migration policy.

That is exactly what has happened.

It is they who need to explain themselves to their voters, not us, he says.

The party's group leader in the Riksdag, Johan Pehrson, is in the same line.

- We recently chose to be able to talk about issues with all parties.

But now there were some who thought it was difficult for others to support our policy, he says.

The vote in the Riksdag on the migration issue will take place in June.