September 27, 2006. Copyright 2006, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Reinfeldt prepares to take the helm as Sweden changes direction
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, September 26, Graphic News:  At 41, heÕs poised to become SwedenÕs youngest prime minister, and heÕs a father of three who helps out around the house, but these are not the only reasons why Fredrik Reinfeldt is the ultimate modern politician: he has ended his countryÕs long tradition of leftwing rule by convincing voters that heÕll hang on to the best bits about the opposition.

ReinfeldtÕs four-member Alliance for Sweden, in which his New Moderates are the largest party, pipped the Social Democrats to the post in the mid-September elections, ousting the party that has ruled the country for all but nine years since 1932. Though his majority was wafer thin, it reflected a broad desire for change in a country whose generous welfare system has been criticised for sheltering many who donÕt want to work.

By the time Reinfeldt presented his manifesto, he had already shifted his party towards the centre and convinced Swedes that there was no longer reason to fear the right. And while cynics may carp that Reinfeldt, who has been called the ÒSwedish David CameronÓ, is proof that making your party look more like the opposition is one way to win, there is more to it than that: at last Sweden has a leader who sounds like he belongs in the future.

He has proposed tinkering with, rather than dismantling the welfare state to boost job creation in a country whose real unemployment statistics, he says, are hidden behind training and youth schemes. Reinfeldt wants to cut taxes and reduce benefits to get Sweden back to work while maintaining health and social benefits. In some ways, itÕs a reality check. 

He has said that his political attitudes were formed as a young man whose parents sometimes struggled in a culture that did not encourage entrepreneurs: his mother was a management consultant and his father ran training schemes. Born the eldest of three sons in August 1965, Reinfeldt eventually settled with his family in a Stockholm suburb.

After graduating with a business and economics degree in 1989, he was elected to the Riksdag and in 1992 he became chairman of the ModeratesÕ youth wing. In his 1993 book, The Sleeping People, Reinfeldt expressed the attitudes and ideas about the countryÕs welfare state that would eventually form his key election platform. 

However, it was his vocal criticism of former prime minister Carl Bildt and supporters that kept Reinfeldt on the sidelines until party disarray led to his election as leader in 2003, a year after the Moderates had slumped to just 15 percent in the elections. Drawing inevitable comparisons with Tony Blair, he renamed the party the New Moderates and immediately set about softening its image with characteristic calm and forethought.

For the first time he persuaded the Christian Democrats, the Liberals and the Centre Party to help him to present a joint challenge to the Social Democrat government of Goran Persson, whose enthusiasm for his own retirement can only have helped ReinfeldtÕs cause. Even Persson appears to have realised that it was time for a new generation.

Reinfeldt and his wife Filippa, the Moderate mayor of Taby, have been compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton. He is nicknamed the ÒsoapÓ because of his known liking for order at home, or -- it has been suggested -- because of an ability to press himself into different political shapes. 

Reinfeldt himself played down the impact of the vote on foreign policy, but his victory is likely to herald a stronger involvement for Sweden in EU affairs. While itÕs certainly a boost to other centre-right leaders, such as GermanyÕs Angela Merkel, itÕs also a warning to any who might think their countriesÕ strong economies mean they cannot lose.
/ENDS