Stockholm’s Elite Doesn't Get What Happens in the North
THE NORTHERN GREEN REVOLUTION "Are we to get ourselves billions in debt to prevent a southern Swedish town from being flooded?"
Welcome to the first in a series of three articles that will be published in the coming weeks. The series has previously been published in Swedish in Rörelsen. It is available in its entirety for the paying subscribers of Last Night in Sweden.
In early January, the Swedish social media bubble was full of pictures of ministers in winter clothes.
One could see Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in way too big coveralls, and Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch in an intensely yellow jacket and a fur hat with with ear flaps. The pictures were spread wildly, along with the information that the temperature in Sweden’s northernmost town Kiruna at the time was around zero.
Northern Swedish tweeters, facebookers and instagrammers were laughing at the expense of the Stockholm authorities: "Why are they dressed for a polar expedition?" "Say you're from Stockholm without saying you're from Stockholm!"
The anger against the government did not arise out of nowhere. During the autumn, criticism has been harsh against the fact that no ministers in the new government live north of the river Dalälven. And to the government’s suggestion that northern Sweden would be without the government’s subsidies for the surging electricity bills.
The idea to start the Swedish presidency of the European Union with a visit to a wintry Kiruna did not come from Ulf Kristersson. It was the previous Social Democratic government that wanted to show the European Commission the ongoing green industrial revolution in the north, and how Sweden is at the forefront of climate work.
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