SD Sources Attack Tidö Parties’ Election Strategy: “They Just Want to Hug”

The Sweden Democrats want a fight. Their coalition partners would rather keep the peace, leaving the Tidö parties divided over how to approach Sweden’s 2026 election.

A central SD source compared the party to the matador in Ferdinand the Bull, waiting for the other side to charge. “Sometimes you feel like the matador in Ferdinand the Bull. ‘Stab me! Kick me! Do something!’” the source said.

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Sometimes you feel like the matador in Ferdinand the Bull. ‘Stab me! Kick me! Do something!’

The tension surfaced after a meeting between SD leader Jimmie Åkesson and Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch in Sölvesborg. Åkesson described the meeting on social media, noting that Busch brought cake and he served Skånerost coffee. Busch later told Dagens Nyheter that the parties agreed on four more years for the “blue-yellow team.”

But Åkesson still wants Busch to publicly reject any possibility that the Christian Democrats could support Magdalena Andersson as prime minister. He called that a condition for lending his credibility to the other parties among SD voters. “It is actually a requirement for me to lend my credibility and vouch for the other parties on our side to SD voters,” Åkesson wrote.

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It is actually a requirement for me to lend my credibility and vouch for the other parties on our side to SD voters.

The dispute challenges a communications strategy developed in the prime minister’s office under Ulf Kristersson. It has presented the Tidö parties as a united team that gets things done, unlike the red-green opposition. SD figures now argue that this broad unity message has not paid off in the polls. They say voters should have seen more of the hard policy disputes between the parties, including recent disagreements over migration. “Then we would have had a really good debate where we could show the breadth of Tidö. But nobody wants to. They don’t want the conflict with us. They just want to hug,” another SD source said.

The governing parties and SD have long failed to command a majority in opinion polls. They will therefore run separately rather than issue a joint election manifesto. The intended division of labor was for SD to attract voters on the far right while the other parties pursued their own segments, including the Christian Democrats’ effort to reach centrist voters with the slogan “a right with heart.” Now the parties are arguing over whether that separation should also mean less effort to appear united.

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Then we would have had a really good debate where we could show the breadth of Tidö. But nobody wants to. They don’t want the conflict with us. They just want to hug.