NEWSPAPERS ON OUR SIDE

For the Swedish centre-right opposition to win the election in 2006 and remove the ever governing Social Democrats from power, many things will be needed. A strong message, a good cooperative spirit, good public performances are some of the more obvious things.

What they also need is support from outside of politics - support from business people, people in the universities, people working in the cultural sphere and so on, And of course, support from the newspapers. Now I don't belong to those that believe that newspapers are going to win you elections, mainly because I doubt that enough people pay enough attention to the editorials for them to have a big effect, but it's still good with support from there. And many Swedish papers are centre-right editorialwise (but left leaning in the news reporting).

Even so, support looks stronger than usual - especially considering that it's so much time left until the election. Already Svenska Dagbladet and their chief political editor PJ Anders Linder has expressed his support for the new spirit of cooperation. Per T Ohlsson at Sydsvenskan has done the same (though not in the linked article), and he actually supported the Social Democrats in the last election since he was so disappointed with how the opposition ran it's business.

Today Östgöta Correspondenten has decided to do the same. And the opposition parties would probably do well to take notice that one of the main reason for all of these papers' support is the cooperative spirit that is emerging. Keep with that, find a better way to communicate the strong message of why government change is needed, and the opposition should have a good chance this time around. Something they haven't had in a while.

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