Far-right falls short in Sweden

But the party has shifted the terms of the debate. Matthew Partridge reports.

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Stefan Lfven: struggling to form a coalition
(Image credit: Copyright (c) 2018 Shutterstock. No use without permission.)

"Despite the tone of some reports in foreign media in the run-up to Sunday's election, Sweden has not actually been taken over by fascist hordes," says Nicholas Aylott in The Independent. While the share of the vote achieved by the far-right Sweden Democrats party was five percentage points higher then in 2014, its 17.6% "was some way below what some polls, at least, had predicted". Instead of competing to come first, it was pushed into third place by the Moderate Party. Since the seven major parties "have pledged not to negotiate directly with it about anything", there is no chance of it getting near power.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri