Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9619962:


Equality means no mercy 8 4, 7:05am

@Mickey

"You are literally contradicting yourself. A party is by definition made up of its members combined wishes, and some of those wishes aren't being addressed by the party. Ergo, the party is failing its members - plain and simple."

No I'm not.

First and most importantly - the vast majority of voters aren't actually MEMBERS of any party. They contribute nothing to the democratic processes within the party and as such have chosen not to influence that at all.

Either because they're happy with the party as it is or because they're too lazy to get active in the party. In either case they have made their choice and have to live with that - there is no point whining that someone else doesn't give you what you want when you have every opportunity to do it yourself but just chose not to do so.

Secondly - even when there are actual MEMBERS of parties that don't get their wishes "addressed" as you say that's always going to be the case and there is nothing problematic with that.
No party can cater to every single members every wish - that's impossible.

That's why every party has a democratic structure where members are free to argue for their opinions and seek support from others on the issues they feel the party should advance.

In the case of immigration policy it's obviously the case that there in no other party besides SD have been a large enough group of members that have pushed for tougher immigrations policies before the massive immigrant wave of 2015.

And when that wave came it wasn't like all our parties had to be forced by their members to change their stance either - the party leadership just reacted to the changing reality that our civil authorities for the first time said that they couldn't cope with the pressure put on the system.

That's because every other party in Sweden has always viewed the question of immigration from a perspective based on reality, whereas SD has based theirs on the fantasy of immigration destroying the nation.

When for the first time the number of refugees coming actually became so large it was no longer manageable all parties reacted to that reality and their members and voters neither had to push their leadership to do it or, for the most part, had any opposition to the changing policies.

There is no sign there are any real opposition between any other party or in any other party on this issue. Again the rest of Sweden - politically active people and regular voters alike - seem to be in unison on this issue with just the SD and their voters dissenting.

Which is fine - they get to dissent of course, but they're still a minority party that can't form a coalition with any other party so they won't get to influence policy making at all.

Which is just how democracy is meant to work.

SD's members and voters feel VERY strongly about their one issue - but there are simply not enough of them to claim power alone and they're not willing to compromise on that issue in any way to cooperate with any other party.

So they get to sit by themselves and sulk while life goes on without them.