Magdalena Andersson has handed back the mandate to form a government, two weeks after her centre-left bloc won a narrow majority of three seats.
The Social Democrat leader told a press conference on Monday that there was “currently no possibility” for her to put a cabinet together.
The immediate cause was a vote in the Riksdag.
Over the weekend the Left Party said it would support Andreas Norlén, the Moderate incumbent, for speaker rather than a Social Democrat. On Monday, the vote was held and Norlén won.
Andersson called that a “new constellation” of Left members and Moderates.
Norlén was re-elected with 200 votes. She said the largest party in a government normally holds the speaker’s chair, and that she would draw the consequences of the Left’s choice.
Nooshi Dadgostar, the Left leader, denied any pact with the Moderates.
Her party still named Andersson as its candidate for prime minister.
Ida Gabrielsson, the Left’s deputy leader, said government talks could take a long time and that the house needed a fixed point. That point, she said, was Norlén.
Any cooperative spirit was already broken before the speaker’s ballot. On 13 September the Social Democrats, Greens, Centre Party and Left Party took 176 of 349 seats against 173 for Ulf Kristersson’s Tidö bloc.
The popular-vote margin was about 50,000.
The Left, up six seats to 30, had said it would not prop up a Social Democrat government from outside and wanted ministers.
The Centre Party, under Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist, said it would not sit in or support a government that gave influence to the far left or the far right.
Without the Centre, Andersson’s other partners have 151 seats. If the Left votes no with the right, she has a majority against her.
Those two demands have not moved. The speaker fight made the split visible.
Last week prosecutors and the special unit against corruption opened files on suspected election fraud in Dalarna, including a sitting Left MP who refused to vacate his seat while a personal-vote campaign is examined.
Witnesses described approaches to addicts and homeless people to harvest votes.
Dadgostar downplayed that scandal and called the numbers “only a few votes.”
Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch called the affair “a total collapse.”
Andersson herself had already called the suspicions “very, very serious” — before she needed the same party to make her prime minister.
The speaker may now ask Kristersson, or another leader in what Andersson called the new constellation, to try.
Four failed prime-ministerial votes trigger a fresh election. Sweden continues to be in a caretaker government.
