Updated 13.49 | Published 13.15
Elisabeth Thand Ringkvist continues to refuse to let the Left Party into government.
Now the Center leader aims to win over disappointed Tidöväljare who went to S to bring about a change of power.
– When Tidö collapses, there are parties that rise from the rubble and want to continue to take responsibility for Sweden, says the party leader.
It is Tuesday afternoon and Elisabeth Thand Ringkvist and party secretary Hannes Hervieu have just presented their newly printed election manifesto in the Riksdag’s press center.
A bundle with 328 proposals in a range of different areas, ranging from the labor market, legal policy and welfare.
– We have developed policies for a lot of areas for which we did not have such a unified policy before. The most important thing is that there will be more jobs, how emissions will be reduced and how welfare will work throughout the country. Concretely, it is about reduced employer contributions, a conversion bonus for electric cars of up to SEK 50,000 and SEK 50 billion for rural areas, says Elisabeth Thand Ringkvist.
What will that money be spent on?
– They can be invested in care, school and welfare and on infrastructure such as roads and trains.
The Center Party wants, among other things, that doctors who move to rural areas should have their student loans written off, raise school fees for small schools in rural areas and attract teachers with a salary bonus to areas with low teacher density.
– To attract people to move to areas that may need to leave family and friends when moving, says the Center leader.
Stands behind Magdalena Andersson
Last week, Elisabeth Thand Ringkvist announced that the party is backing Magdalena Andersson as candidate for prime minister – and that Ulf Kristersson disqualified himself by his choice to let SD into government.
After the announcement, the reactions from the bourgeois parties were strong and the Prime Minister called the Center Party “Sweden’s most irrelevant party”.
– It was expected when we said that he disqualified himself through his collaboration with SD, where it is clear that they will get many and heavy ministerial positions and the politics of expulsions and the heavy climate denial that is coming more and more from the right-wing parties.
Do you think they are climate deniers?
– I cannot interpret it in any other way because they do not care very much about the climate issue. They have not bothered to expand the wind power either at sea or on land. They have not negotiated very well in the EU and wanted to back away from a lot of our climate requirements and generally do not speak very well about climate change. And so the emissions have increased.
She points out that electric car sales stopped during the mandate period.
– If you lower the petrol tax, you can compensate with a stronger electric car bonus, but they have not done that.
“He’s stressed”
According to her, Kristersson’s angry reaction also has to do with the state of opinion, where the gap between the Tidö parties and the red-greens was a record high 12 percentage points in SCB’s party sympathy survey. And that the Liberals are about to leave the Riksdag.
– It is proof that he is stressed that it looks like the Tidö parties are losing this election.
However, the same survey showed that S, V and MP can get their own majority – and the Center Party will be completely without influence on both the right and the left. But the demand to keep V out of an S-led government to give its support stands firm.
Do you expect Magdalena Andersson to be able to redeem the Left Party if they are needed to form a majority?
– Yes. But my ambition is for the Center Party to become so large that the Left Party is not needed. My hope is that many middle-class voters, who have previously voted for Tidö and who may have gone to the Social Democrats, will see that the Center Party is needed as a guarantor so that it will not capsize to the left in the event of a change of power. That was what we discussed a lot in the party when we landed in Ulf Kristersson disqualifying himself as prime ministerial candidate.
If S and MP form a government, can you imagine a Tidö solution where you and the Left Party have officials inside the Government Office?
– No, it sounds absolutely incredible.
If there is a red-green election win, what will S and C agree on immediately the day after the election?
– I don’t know. It is probably the societal realization that we need growth and that climate emissions must decrease.
Expect Tidö to collapse
The Center Party can form a government with the Social Democrats and the Green Party. But Thand Ringkvist dreams of a coalition with more emphasis on the right. She coldly expects Tidö to fall in the event of an election loss.
– When Tidö collapses, there are parties that rise from the rubble and want to continue to take responsibility for Sweden, says the party leader.
– Ideally, I don’t want the Green Party involved. Ideally, we would form a government with S, KD and the Liberals. But I realize that it is difficult to add up those percentages.
Elisabeth Thand Ringkvist about…
…how there will be more jobs: Above all, it must become cheaper to hire. We do this by reducing employer contributions for those who have been unemployed for a long time, the first ten employees in a company and reduced tax for those with salaries below SEK 30,000.
…profit ban at school: No. Profits must not be withdrawn if quality requirements are not met. There must be heavy fines and strict controls. We manage to regulate the financial market very tough. Then you know that you can be out of business the next day if it fails. But if it is to be possible to start schools in rural areas, we should not decide in what form it should be.
…the opposition to SD: There are several things. They are climate skeptics and their climate policy here is non-existent. The Sweden Democrats pit people against each other and create suspicion and mistrust, this does not benefit a libertarian society. Their deportation policy also leads to the deportation of important labor. In addition, they question basic institutions, make SR and SVT suspicious, and I feel that they think you can ignore knowledge and expertise in politics.
…the resistance to V: They have a completely alienated view of growth and what creates jobs. The fact that people with terrorist sympathies have been revealed complicates the matter, that they do not have active control over which party members they include on their lists. It is incomprehensible. You have to have a system that you don’t end up there.
