Swedish left wins but 'integration' snaps at its heels

Sweden's Social Democrats escaped the European lurch to the right with their third consecutive election victory yesterday, but not without seeing an unexpected surge by the centre-right Liberal party, which wants tough new immigration rules.

Although Goran Persson's leftwing Social Democrats recovered from a trough of 36.4% four years ago to take 40% of the vote, it was the success of the maverick Liberal party which caused the greater stir.

With immigration at the heart of its manifesto, it almost trebled its support, winning 48 parliamentary seats with 13.4% of the vote compared with 17 in 1998, when it took only 4.7%.

Although it is in favour of immigration to fill gaps in the labour market, and insists it is not racist, the party has espoused the kind of policies pioneered by successful anti-immigration parties in Denmark and Norway.

During the campaign it argued that immigrants unable to find work within three months of their arrival in Sweden should be sent back to their home countries.

Its leader, Lars Leijonborg, insists that immigrants should take Swedish language tests before being given citizenship.

About 7.3% of Sweden's 9m population are migrants from outside the EU.

"After four straight election losses it was do or die.

"We won. Our message was change," a jubilant Mr Leijonborg, 52, said yesterday.

Immigration has never been a serious subject of debate in a Swedish election campaign but the Liberal party has ensured that the new government - likely to be a coalition of Social Democrats, greens and former communists - will have to tackle the issue.

"The big winner was the Liberal party," said Anders Mellbourn, director of the Swedish Institute for International Affairs.

"They were the dominant non-socialist party in the 1950s but have looked like they were facing extinction. There has been a vacuum about immigration and they probably picked up some of the racist vote, even though their leader specifically told racists not to vote for them."

Liberal party sources stress that their message is "yes" to immigration but "no" to segregation.

"We have a big divide in our society," a senior party member said.

"In the inner cities we have a lot of immigrants living on benefit, out of work or on drugs, and a gap is opening up between ordinary Swedes who have had/have jobs and immigrants who have always been unemployed."

But Akhenaton de Leon of the Norwegian anti-racism group Omod said: "This is just the beginning.

"Once the taboo [of talking about immigration] has been broken the floodgates will open and the issue will be talked about in the same crude fashion in Sweden as it is in Denmark and Norway."