Can the Swedish prime minister’s new podcast improve his fortunes in this year’s election? | Sweden
“Hello Ulf!” says a male voice on the Swedish prime minister’s answering machine. “I wonder how many beers you had on Saturday night?”
Another person looking for Ulf Kristersson’s new podcast Call the minister of statistics! (Call the Prime Minister!) asks whether he is friends with Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, which also supports his government and is a rival in the upcoming general election.
With the countdown to September’s vote beginning and Kristersson’s poll looking less than positive, the centre-right Moderates party this week launched a weekly podcast on Spotify and YouTube in a bid to give voters a direct line to the prime minister. Listeners are invited to “ask questions, come up with ideas, and share their experiences.”
In response to calls that included questions about violence against women and his government’s decision to send 13-year-olds to prison, Kristersson tries to strike a friendly tone.
Dressed in a shirt and tie and sitting in a candlelit room, he laughs at the beer question and replies: “One of life’s important questions.” While he says he’s not a big beer drinker, if he drinks beer on a Saturday night, “he’ll probably drink one, probably two,” adding that it will almost always be an IPA, before singing the praises of a particular Swedish brewery.
The goal of the new podcast, the moderates say, is to “create a good conversation with the Swedish prime minister – a friendly, curious and frank conversation about people’s realities.”
Attendees can call in to the podcast in its recorded form to speak with the prime minister in person, or ask questions in advance via voicemail or email. Before the first episode, the Moderates say there were too many calls and the answering machine was broken.
But critics say Kristersson needs to do more than launch a podcast to succeed in the next election.
As he approaches four years in power as leader of a minority coalition that relies on support from the Sweden Democrats, a poll in December found the gap between Kristersson and Åkesson narrowing when it comes to trust, with him well below opposition Social Democrats leader Magdalena Andersson.
“Ulf Kristersson is having a hard time with his confidence poll numbers and I don’t think drinking populist beer will help him,” said the show’s host Parisa Höglund. politics game (political game) podcast broadcast on public service broadcaster Sveriges Radio. He said the Sweden Democrats were his “biggest headache” because voters favored them on his party’s traditional talking points, such as law, justice and immigration.
Höglund added: Call the minister of statistics! his format is faster, friendlier and more varied than the interviews he usually conducts; after all, it is a new way of conveying the same policies and talking points. He said it was also a way to avoid difficult questions from journalists.
“If you watch the episode on YouTube and see the prime minister in a more comfortable environment, sitting on a leather sofa with candles in the background, answering questions from normal people, you might get the impression that you are seeing another side of the prime minister,” he said. “But it should not be forgotten that the whole thing was set up so that the prime minister could control the narrative about himself as a politician and his politics ahead of the autumn elections.”
Other questions asked in the first episode, which aired on Tuesday, included a proposal to legally shorten the working week and a woman asking for reasons to vote for her party.
When one caller asked whether he should be addressed as Mr. Prime Minister, Kristersson replied: “Ulf works really well.”
Sveriges Radyo Ekot’s political commentator Fredrik Furtenbach said of the podcast: “I doubt it will make any sense. Firstly, the parties’ own communications are generally very boring, and secondly, there is a big risk that it will only reach the people who will reach them.” […] I love Kristersson anyway.”
