Centre’s red line is a poor defence of enterprise
A small business trying to hire its first employee and an individual holding a billion-krona fortune do not present the same economic problem. Centre ought to be especially good at explaining the difference. Its blanket rejection of Left Party ministers makes it harder to distinguish a practical defence of enterprise from a general resistance to redistribution.
Centre’s economic priorities include cheaper hiring, simpler rules and lower taxes on work and business. There is a serious political argument for each. A shop owner dealing with payroll costs or a new firm struggling with administration deserves policies that address those specific problems.
That argument loses precision when the interests of smaller firms and people with extraordinary personal wealth are treated as though they always coincide. A person starting a company may have little capital and considerable personal risk. Someone with a vast, diversified fortune has different resources and options. Sensible policy should be able to recognise both situations without pretending that every measure affecting the latter will necessarily harm the former.
Centre could bring precisely that distinction to negotiations. It could press for practical support for new and growing firms while examining proposals for a greater contribution from the wealthiest. It could demand that any tax proposal demonstrate how it would protect viable businesses and avoid creating liabilities that could only be met through damaging forced sales.
The Left Party would then have to answer those questions. Advocating redistribution does not relieve it of the responsibility to understand investment, ownership and employment. A poorly designed tax could undermine its own objectives. Centre would perform a useful public service by making that scrutiny rigorous and insisting that a coalition agreement reflected the answers.
An absolute veto on Left Party ministers goes much further. Centre’s announcement of talks retains that exclusion before the parties have negotiated a common programme. It rules out an entire form of cooperation regardless of what economic safeguards or compromises the Left Party might accept.
There is a liberal reason to resist this approach. Opportunity depends on whether people without substantial existing wealth can build a secure life and attempt something new. An aspiring entrepreneur may need reliable healthcare, education and public infrastructure as urgently as a reduction in paperwork. A politics of enterprise should be curious about how those conditions are financed and who currently lacks access to them.
Centre’s supporters are entitled to protection against policies they believe would damage the economy. But protection can be written into an agreement through specific limits and commitments. Asking the party to negotiate does not require it to approve every Left Party proposal or abandon its understanding of how prosperity is created.
It requires Centre to defend that understanding in detail. The party should explain how its preferred settlement would help someone with a good idea and little money, what contribution it would expect from those with exceptional wealth, and which compromises would make a government workable. That would give its economic position substance. Repeating that no Left Party politician may become a minister leaves those much more consequential questions unanswered.
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