The June Crisis

Waking up early after the shortest night of the year, I am preparing for a supervision meeting with my PhD student this morning. Around the same time as our meeting, the Swedish parliament will vote on a motion of no confidence which may spell the end for the centre-left government of the last three years, possibly leading to a very rare snap election in the fall.

In what may become known as the “June Crisis”, the Left party is playing a very dangerous game right now, one that could very well end up opening the door for the far-right Sweden Democrats. While the nominal issue behind the crisis has to do with rent control, I think it is fair to say that it is also a reaction to the broader market-liberal agenda that the current government has been pursuing.

While I am actually in favour of more liberal housing policies, I am, just like the Left party, deeply troubled by the privatization of education and health care that has taken place over the last decades. Still, given that what is at stake here, I think all of this is exceptionally irresponsible by Nooshi Dadgostar and the Left. If the Sweden Democrats would ever come to power, it would be a direct threat to the “liberal democratic basic order” of society (to borrow the German term) with possibly irreversible consequences.