Could Annie Lööf become Sweden’s first female prime minister?
As the Nordic country enters an unprecedented fifth month without a government, the leader of the Centre party is emerging as someone who could break the deadlock
Sweden’s inconclusive September election saw a record 161 women take their seats in the 349-member Riksdag – the highest proportion of female MPs in Europe (ahead of two other Nordic countries, Finland and Norway) and the seventh highest in the world. But the country that in 2014 proudly declared that it had “the first feminist government in the world” has never had a female prime minister, and is about to enter an unprecedented fifth month under a caretaker administration.
The key to resolving the latter problem could well lie with 35-year-old Annie Lööf, a former business minister and, since 2011, the youngest ever leader of the tax-cutting, business-promoting, immigrant-welcoming Centre party. Neither is it inconceivable that Lööf, Sweden’s most trusted politician in a host of polls since 2017, could also find herself rectifying the former problem – although most analysts think it unlikely and she herself has said the top job is not her focus.