The feminist party in Sweden...

Boy, this political party sounds like a ton of fun!

One of the leading figures in Sweden’s Feminist Initiative (Fi) has announced she is leaving the party, and has launched an extraordinary attack on one of her erstwhile colleagues.

Susanne Linde, 50, says she is leaving because of a conflict with Tiina Rosenberg, who was elected to the organisation’s board at Fi’s conference this weekend. She accuses Rosenberg of bullying and of holding extreme views.

Linde told Svenska Dagbladet that Rosenberg had said that “a good Moderate is a dead Moderate”. Linde used to belong to the Liberal Party, which is allied with the conservative Moderate Party.

When Linde told the party’s board on Thursday that she might stand down, Rosenberg told her:

“I’m glad that our intelligence reserve won’t fall with you.”

“I felt so violated I started to cry,” Linde told Expressen.

Linde herself failed to get re-elected to the board this weekend, but claims that this has not provoked her decision to resign.

It was claimed on Sunday by Ebba Witt-Brattström, who resigned from the party three weeks ago, that Rosenberg had said that “women who sleep with men are traitors to their gender.”

Rosenberg, a professor of gender studies at Stockholm University, also caused raised eyebrows on Friday when she shouted “fucking racist” at a colleague who was having trouble pronouncing the name of Devrim Mavi, one of Fi’s three newly-elected spokespeople.

The resignation of Linde will be a blow for Fi, which this weekend presented a raft of policies, including a six-hour working day, rules to make fathers take more paternity leave and more restrictions on paying for sex.

The presence of Linde on Fi’s board has not always brought positive publicity for the party, however. The mother of three provided Fi’s first scandal when it emerged that she was working for the party despite receiving sick benefits for “burn-out”.