A Costly Dirty Story

They have no shame?

Get It Try It

Back in 2017, at the height of Sweden's 'IT scandal' with the Transport Authority, the personal secretary of prime minister Kjell Stefan Löfven, Emma Lennartsson, was forced to resign.

On a Sunday.

The storm about Löfven's filthy business with the Transport Authority was brewing, cabinet ministers were lying left and right to protect the country's very innocent Richard Nixon prime minister. No one was to know how deeply he was personally involved - the government would otherwise collapse.

Things went so far that one cabinet minister, when asked why he didn't inform the PM, who was of course supposed to know nothing at all, explained:

'Well we'd need a secure room to talk about such sensitive matters, and I never found such a room.'

Against this backdrop, Emma Lennartsson was summoned to the Constitutional Committee.

Obviously everyone was bullshitting, and the committee wanted to get to the bottom of it.



So the Social Democrats called a crisis meeting.

On a Sunday.

So she wouldn't have to testify, of course.

Lennartsson was richly rewarded of course. She got tonnes of cash in compensation, and they also paved the road to a new career, richly rewarded too, of course, where she went on to bungle things in a classic manner.

And now she's back in from the cold. She's just been appointed personal secretary for the minister for finance, Magdalena Andersson.

The prime minister, Kjell Stefan Löfven, the one ultimately responsible for the cock-up, still has his job, despite historic lows in the polls, where the Sweden Democrats are now in a convincing lead.

The very knowledgeable Johan Westerholm has the word.

The story of Emma Lennartsson is a dirty story. Her new appointment is remarkable in several ways. Partly because of the obvious, namely that a member of the Social Democrats can cause so much damage and always be welcome back. Lennartsson's job was to keep the PM informed. But state secrets were leaking out of the Transport Authority and everyone in government knew it - except the PM of course (ahem).

A great deal of drama: the cabinet convened in a panic on a Sunday in August 2017. Lennartsson waived her claim to the customary 'parachute' in the millions, but the Social Democrats agreed to give her serious cash in compensation - for resigning that very day and for keeping her mouth shut.

Today Lennartsson lives with Johan Sjölander, a party secretary in Stockholm who was recruited by the disgraced Veronica Palm (aka 'Veronica Facepalm') and Sjölander's immediate superior is Anders Ygeman, the amiable cabinet minister who claimed the PM couldn't - for years - be informed about the IT-scandal in the Transport Authority because he couldn't find a room.