Anders Adlercreutz: Unrepentent, uncompromising, and full of contradictions

Life comes at you quickly.

One day you’re in Brussels meeting with other Europe Ministers; the next day you’re meeting a minor European royal in Helsinki, then being voted as the new chairperson of your political party, and landing a new ministerial role.

Welcome to the world of Anders Adelercreutz, the architect-turned-politician who was elected as the new leader of the Swedish People’s Party (SFP/RKP) earlier in June, replacing stalwart Anna-Maja Henriksson who heads to Brussels as an MEP after an eight-year shift at SFP’s helm.

“Yes, in between five television interviews that day, I had a chat with Romanian royalty!” the cello-playing politician tells Finland Insider.

“That describes the day of a minister. In general, the schedule is pretty cramped. I thought being Minister of European Affairs there would be a lot of travel, and so in that sense I wasn’t surprised by the workload. Now I will switch to become minister of education, and that changes my workload again,” he explains.

The Swedish People’s Party has undergone as much of a change in the last year as Adlercreutz has done in the last month: it went from being one-fifth of a red-green government with intersectional feminism at the heart of its policy lines and feted internationally for its progressive leadership; to being one-quarter of a government in coalition with a far-right party riddled with controversial politicians and beset with racist scandals.

Adlercreutz had been considered a more liberal ‘City Finlandssvensk’ politician, compared to Henriksson’s more traditional and conservative (with a small ‘c’) Ostrobothnian style of leadership. So will there be changes?

“People are probably reading too much into labels. I’ve been living a lot of my life in the countryside and have a lot of connections to agriculture. It’s more of a prejudice than a fact that there would be a wide range of liberal conservatives in our party,” Adlercreutz states.

First test of political mettle

The Aalto-educated 54-year-old had an early chance to stamp his mark in government this week when a vote of no-confidence was called in Minister of Economic Affairs Wille Rydman (Finns) by the opposition Social Democrats, Greens and Left Alliance.

Rydman has faced multiple and repeated accusations that he groomed underage girls, including high school students, for sex. He has also accused the media of lying about his actions, despite a recent court ruling which found no basis to uphold complaints against journalists who reported the initial accusations against him - meaning the things they reported were not found to be false.

Most of Adlercreutz’s SFP MPs voted to give their confidence to Rydman.

“A vote of no-confidence in a minister is also a vote of no-confidence in the government as a whole. The you of course can ask the question of what Finland needs now. Do we need a functioning government, or do we need a political crisis? What are the risks and negative sides, and what is the responsible thing to do?” asks Adlercreutz, casting aside his usual affable persona with a more brusque response.

“I have been very vocal about what I think. I have not held back criticism.”

Critics would say the Finns Party could simply avoid more uproar and swap out Rydman for another MP, as they are going to do in a year anyway; and that a political crisis wouldn’t necessarily escalate if the Swedish People’s Party voted against one specific minister - as they did in 2023 by breaking a century-long convention as a government party and voted against Vilhelm Junnila, another Finns Party MP who finally quit after weeks of media reporting on his racism.

“I do think as a minister you have to take criticism, you cannot attack the media [as Rydman has done] nor the institutions nor the Chancellor of Justice and so on. I think the position we have here is very clear: should you overthrow the government or should you have discussions within government and demand the people involved learn a lesson or two? We have chosen the latter. But I don’t think there is any doubt whether we accept this behaviour or not.”

Adlercreutz didn’t elaborate on what lessons, if any, Rydman might have learned; or how he had been punished or sanctioned within government, if at all.

A vision to grow the party beyond its traditional reach

So if the SFP lead by Anders Adlercreutz won’t stick up for women who say they have been groomed for sex or treated roughly by a government minister; and won’t vote against the minister when he gaslights Finland’s media outlets and other institutions, what does a party under his leadership look like?

“My SFP will understand it has a unique political position in the Finnish landscape. We are a liberal centre-right party I believe the only one in Finland and the amount of Finns that support our worldview is more than 4%” he says.

“I hope that my Swedish People’s Party will distance itself from the sort of politics which is built out of real or perceived fears,” he says.

The statement seems at odds with the reality of being part of a government coalition where leading politicians have advanced the racist ‘great replacement theory’ on population change. Finland’s Supo intelligence service says this conspiracy theory has been used as a rationale for violent attacks by the far-right on minority groups.

So is it fair to say that being a part of a controversial right-wing government has damaged the Swedish People’s Party? Adlercreutz admits “this is a part of today’s political realities.”

“In the previous government there was a wide range of views, even though we were all fairly liberal parties. Now we are more aligned economically but we have a wider range of values and we have been criticised for that. I understand where that criticism comes from.”

“If you look at immigration we have been clear the immigration policies in the government programme are only partly based on what we would view as ideal.”

Adlercreutz concedes that in order to win back trust from voters, especially in his own party where there is reported widespread anger at SFP’s continued participation in Finland’s most right-wing government ever, they need to be crystal clear about what their policy goals are, and what their red lines are.

“At present, this is the government programme we negotiated one year ago with its good parts and its deficiencies, and as a party we have committed ourselves to fulfil the programme,” he tells Finland Insider.

What does the future hold? 

Looking ahead, Adlercreutz says Finland is “very well positioned to do well globally”, after the government implemented new workplace reforms he says should have been done 20 or even 30 years ago.

“I am sure the parties in opposition now will not undo them, and they will probably reap the rewards coming from that economic activity,” he says.

Adlercreutz also says he hopes the political discussion in Finland can “focus less on fear and what we are scared of, and less hand-wringing, and more looking into the future and recognising our possibilities which are not insignificant.”

“Polarisation is a problem in all European societies and in the US too. In the Finnish political discussion we should be careful about importing narratives from American domestic politics and transplanting them into a Finnish political reality.”