The cooperation between the Tidö parties is no dance on roses – but it is necessary, says L leader Johan Pehrson in his Almedalen speech.
Alternative is a red-green mess.
Johan Pehrson is glad that there was a liberal-bourgeois power shift in the last parliamentary election.
The Liberals play a role. Without us, there would not have been a bourgeois government, he says as a concluding speaker from a rainy Visby.
Without L, there would not have been investments in schools, the climate, integration, or a "secured public service", according to Pehrson.
But the cooperation with SD, KD, and M does not seem entirely frictionless.
It is no dance on roses to cooperate. It requires both silver tape and a crowbar, I promise. But it is absolutely necessary to turn the development around and get Sweden in order, he says.
The alternative is a "red-green mess" that has given unclear messages about both lowered and raised taxes on work, savings, and entrepreneurship, he continues.
Earlier in the day, the L leader reiterated that the party will not sit in a government where SD is included if the Tidö parties win the next election.
Wants to see contract
Pehrson otherwise devotes a large part of the speech to schools and hammers home several times that The Liberals are Sweden's school party.
L has proposed during the day that parents, whose children risk not completing elementary school, should sign a "parent contract" with the school.
The party has drawn inspiration from the UK, where a similar system has existed since 2003.
The parent contract can, according to the proposal, include agreements on homework, screen time, sleep, and leisure activities.
More people need to worry about what lack of sleep, lack of physical activity, and too little reading at home means for children's school results, says Pehrson.
There is a lack of male role models, he continues.
More people need to feel dad anxiety over children who are struggling in school.
No coercion
According to Education Minister Lotta Edholm (L), the contract is not about coercion.
This is about students who risk not achieving knowledge results and where parents can be a strong support from home, she says.
On Tuesday, the Sweden Democrats announced that they wanted to become Sweden's new school party. Johan Pehrson does not see them as a threat.
It's good that more parties are talking about this, he says.
He believes that citizens will reward L for driving the school issue long-term in the next election.
Pehrson also wants to see a mobile phone ban in schools, more physical textbooks, and remove "economically short-sighted actors" from the free school system.
We take responsibility for schools and we say: Close this experimental workshop.
