Daniel Suhonen leads the Swedish trade union–backed think tank Katalys. He was the speechwriter for left-wing Social Democratic Party leader Håkan Juholt and is the author of the book The Party Leader Who Came in from the Cold.

He also calls himself "the social democrats' political wing" and even though I don't agree with him all the time he is one of the few visible members of the party that I respect.

After the 2018 election, the Swedish Social Democratic Party which had been the largest in the country for more than a century considered itself compelled to enter into a co-operation agreement with centrist parties, embracing a neoliberal program comprising tax cuts for high earners, the privatization of the labor exchange, and the deregulation of the market for rental accommodation.

Since the signing of this agreement support for the Social Democrats in the opinion polls has plummeted and the most recent polls indicate support only among between 22–23 percent of the electorate, which is less than Sweden’s largest right-wing extremist party, the Sweden Democrats.

To put it mildly, something has happened to Olof Palme’s party and his country. On the thirty-fourth anniversary of his murder, social democracy is in existential crisis. The paradigm shift I described brought about decades of decline — and there’s no sign of it ending soon.