Norlen gives Andersson until 12 October to try again for a Swedish government

Sweden's parliament speaker, Andreas Norlen, on Friday asked Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson to try again to form a government, and he set 12 October as the date she must report back.

Norlen said the political and parliamentary conditions were the same as when he first gave her the task. "It is exactly the same election result, the same distribution of seats, and the same parties that are designating her as their leading candidate for prime minister, so it is reasonable for her to resume her exploratory talks," he said. The assignment formally begins on Monday 5 October. She can hand in a final report or ask for more time. After that comes a vote on the prime minister in the Riksdag.

The arithmetic has not moved. Andersson's centre-left bloc won 176 seats to 173 for Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson's right-wing coalition in the 13 September election. In a 349-seat chamber, 175 is a bare majority. She has one seat more than that on paper, and she does not have a government. The four parties that won do not agree on who should be allowed into the cabinet.

She handed the first mandate back on Monday. The reason she gave was the Left Party's decision over the weekend to back a Moderate Party candidate for speaker. She said that vote had undercut her attempt to build a government. The Left Party is inside the 176. A party that will vote for her bloc's speaker candidate is a party she can count. A party that votes for the other side's speaker is a party whose later support on a budget she cannot assume. That is why a vote on a presiding officer, not on a tax bill, stopped the first try.

Andersson welcomed the second mandate and said she would use the weekend to decide how to push the talks. "The path forward requires all political forces to act constructively and put Sweden and the Swedish people's best interests first," she wrote on Facebook. The sentence does not name the Left Party. The obstacle she named on Monday does.

Sweden forms governments by a rule that looks soft and is not. A candidate for prime minister takes office unless a majority of the Riksdag votes against them. Abstentions do not count as no. That is why a 176-seat bloc can still fail if one of its parties will not sit still, and why a 173-seat bloc can still govern if enough members on the other side stay away from the no vote. Kristersson has been the incumbent through this deadlock. He does not have the seats to win a positive majority. He can survive if Andersson cannot assemble one that holds for the vote.

The calendar is short. From Monday she has a week, to 12 October, before she must answer the speaker. A request for more time is allowed. A second failure is also allowed. Norlen has already shown he will hand the same mandate back rather than switch candidates at the first refusal. He said on Friday that the conditions had not changed. That is an argument for persistence, and it is also a description of the problem. Nothing in the seat table has changed since Monday.

The speaker vote that broke the first round is the detail most coverage treats as procedure. It is the substance. In the Riksdag the speaker is elected by the chamber, and the parties treat that election as a test of who can be counted. The Left Party's choice to back a Moderate candidate told Andersson, in public, that her bloc's discipline did not reach the first ballot after the election. She treated that as fatal to a government built on the same four parties. Norlen has now told her to test them again.

The 176 to 173 split leaves almost no spare votes. One party withholding its members, or sending them to the wrong side of a procedural vote, erases the majority. That is the constraint on any deal she brings back on 12 October. A government that includes the Left Party needs the Left Party to stay. A government that excludes it needs votes from outside the 176, from a right-wing bloc that has 173 of its own and no reason to lend them.

Kristersson remains prime minister while the talks run. The election was three weeks ago. The first mandate lasted until Monday. The second lasts, at the shortest, until 12 October. Sweden has a winner on seats and no cabinet that matches the winner.