Jonas Sjöstedt

Who is Jonas Sjöstedt?

Jonas Sjöstedt is a Swedish politician who is the current chairperson of the Left Party since 2012, and a former metalworker. He is also a member of the Swedish parliament since 2010.

Sjöstedt was born in Gothenburg and became politically active as a union leader in the Volvo plant in the city of Umeå in the early 1990s. Opposed to Swedish membership of the European Union, he was elected Member of the European Parliament in 1995 for the Left Party as part of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left, until he stood down in September 2006. He was elected as a member in the Parliament of Sweden in 2010, representing Västerbotten. In the election, he was placed number one on the Left Party list and was elected in a personal landslide of one third of all preference votes.

Living in New York City from 2006 to 2010, he is also a member of the Socialist Party USA, during a period he also wrote for Swedish leftist publications, radio and print columns, as well as works of history and fiction. He is married to Swedish diplomat Ann Måwe, part of the Swedish delegation to the United Nations.