Swedish PM Magdalena Andersson resigns after just seven hours in the job

Ms Andersson only spent seven hours as Sweden’s first female prime minister before resigning on Wednesday night. Her proposed budget failed to win enough lawmaker support to be passed, with parliament instead backing a spending plan penned by her adversaries — the center-right Moderate Party and Christian Democrat Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats.

Magdalena Andersson, who led a Social Democratic Party-led coalition with the Greens, has no choice but to step down after they quit the coalition, saying the opposition budget did not contain enough of their policies.

When a coalition party quits government the prime minister is expected to resign according to Swedish conventions, reports Politico.

Magdalena Andersson said: “I have met the speaker of parliament and asked to be relieved of my position as prime minister.

“However, I also told him I remain ready to be prime minister but for a Social Democratic single-party government.”

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The parliament voted for a budget drawn-up by the opposition which includes the anti-immigrant far right.

The head of the Green Party, Märta Stenevi, justified her choice of quitting the coalition saying her party could not govern using that budget.

She said: “We have sought to be in government to deliver green policies, it is not our job to administer a budget negotiated by the Sweden Democrats.”

The Greens also stated they could not agree with a budget “drafted for the first time with the far-right.”

Her appointment happened a hundred years after Swedish women were given the vote.

A former junior swimming champion from the university city of Uppsala, she began her political career in 1996 as political adviser to then-Prime Minister Goran Persson.

She has spent the past seven years as finance minister.

Before MPs backed Magdalena Andersson, Sweden was the only Nordic state never to have a woman as PM.

Ms Andersson said that she hoped to try to become prime minister again as a single party government leader.