CHAOS IN SWEDEN AS FIRST FEMALE PM RESIGNS AFTER JUST 12 HOURS

Sweden is in a state of political confusion caused by the long-running attempt to exclude the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats from power. 

This was highlighted by events today (24th Nov) in which the extremely weak coalition government appointed a new Prime Minister, but failed to pass a budget, leading the new PM to resign after just 12 hours in the job. 

Under Swedish law, the appointment of a new PM can be passed with a minority vote, as long as enough MPs abstain to prevent a majority vote against it. 

The new PM, Magdalena Andersson, the country's first female PM, got only 117 positive votes out of 349, but that was enough as the opposition needed 175 votes to stop her and fell just one vote short.

However, the new PM was unable to pass her budget, leading her to resign.

PM Magdalena Andersson, blink and you'll miss her.

All these problems go back to the 2018 election when the vote was split between several parties.

The soft-left Social Democrats with 100 MPs were the biggest party, but needed support from a number of smaller parties to form a government that excluded the third largest party, the anti-immigrant Swedish Democrats, who got 62 MPs. 

This forced the Social Dems to rely on the  Centre Party (31 MPs), the hard-left Left Party (27), the Green Party (16), and one independent MP.

However, the Budget produced today failed to satisfy these smaller parties. The Centre Party withdrew its support after the Social Democrats gave in to the Left Party's demands for excessive pension rises that the government could not reasonably afford. 

Instead of the budget being passed, parliament then passed the budget proposed by the opposition, which includes the centre-right Moderate Party (70 MPs), the Sweden Democrats (62 MPs), the Christian Democrats (22 MPs) and the Liberals (20 MPs). This forced the new PM to step down after only 12 hours in the job. 

Today marks the end of the long-running political quarantine of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats, who have now participated in passing a Swedish budget for the first time. 

A new attempt to form a coalition government will probably be made, one that might even include the Sweden Democrats. The next scheduled elections are not until 2022.  

Compiled from several badly written mainstream sources