STOCKHOLM — Sweden's left has a plan for the future: poach the most high-profile political ideas from the right.

When Prime Minister Stefan Löfven convenes his Social Democrats for a party congress in Gothenburg this week, expect promises to crack down on crime, toughen up border controls and increase defense spending.

For Löfven, a former welder and metal workers' union boss — and one of the few leftist national leaders in Europe — the message of social equality has taken a backseat to law and order.

At the party congress Saturday, Löfven will pitch voters that, in this topsy-turvy world, Social Democrats are the firm hand on the tiller that Sweden needs.

“We are meeting for our congress in troubled times,” Löfven told reporters in Stockholm as the party released its proposals for the conference. “The Social Democrats stand for stability."

With his tough stance, Löfven hopes to avoid the fate of sister parties elsewhere in Europe who have failed to convince voters that they are still relevant now that the welfare states they helped build are well-established.

The Social Democrats, who have been in power for three years, are perilously close to losing.

In France, the far-right National Front have won over working class voters while in the U.K. the Labour Party is losing traction with its traditional base. The Dutch election last month was a bloodbath for the Labor party PvdA which went from 38 to just nine seats in the 150-seat lower house. In Iceland, the Social Democrats came seventh in October elections.

In Sweden, the Social Democrats, who have been in power for three years, are perilously close to losing. Current polls have the three-way Left, Green and Social Democrat party bloc at a combined 40 percent, just behind the center-right group at 41 percent.

Changing values

Notes released ahead of the Gothenburg meeting, titled “Security in a New Era,” sound like they could be coming from the right of center, with little of the utopian vision previously associated with social democracy.

The party promises a crackdown on organized crime, which it has called a blight on suburban lives. It vows a two-year extension of stringent border controls to keep back a wave of refugees who it says could plunge the country back into the crisis which gripped its southern borders in 2015. And it plans to boost national defenses to deter a belligerent Russia.

"The tone reminds me of former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's old policy of 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime'," said Jonas Hinnfors, a political scientist at Gothenburg University. "It’s just that they aren’t saying much about the causes part."

Löfven is currently facing down political adversaries on two sides. The upstart populist Sweden Democrats, who are polling around 17 percent, are seeking to usurp the Social Democrats' position as custodians of the welfare state. They have promised to increase public spending on policing and care for the elderly, among other things — expenditures they say can be funded by cuts in immigration, which they say in turn will reduce integration costs.

“We see the Social Democrats are moving closer to our positions on crime and immigration, but it isn’t enough,” said Mattias Karlsson, a senior lawmaker with the Sweden Democrats.

On the other side, the center-right Moderates, who advocate lower taxes and lower spending on benefits, are polling around 18 percent with their rejuvenated allies in the Center Party at around 14 percent.

Meanwhile, since the last election, support for the Social Democrats has been sliding. For much of its long history, the party polled over 40 percent. At the last election, however, that had fallen to about 31 percent and a further dip has taken current support among voters to about 29 percent, according to polls.

Equality, kindness, cooperation

Löfven's new harder tone is some distance from the values the party was founded on.

The Swedish Social Democrats emerged as a political force in the early 20th century, advocating for workers’ rights in factories and teaming up with trade unions to push for a universal right to vote. As former party leader Per Albin Hansson put it in a 1928 speech: “In the good society, equality, kindness, cooperation and helpfulness prevail.”

Through the 20th century, Löfven's predecessors, including Hansson, Hjalmar Branting and Olof Palme, built the welfare state, providing universal healthcare and schooling, cheap childcare and social housing. With time, their ideas about social equality became an integral part of Swedish self-understanding.

Since the 1994 elections, however, support for the party has been on a downward trajectory attributed to various factors, including a reduction in the number of blue-collar jobs and a lack of new ideas from the party on how to reform the welfare state.

A gloomy view of the world

These days, there is an expressed sense of gloom hanging over Sweden.

In part, Swedes are worried about a newly aggressive Russia, the big neighbor to the east. An influx of immigrants — 163,000 asylum-seekers arrived in Sweeden, a country of 10 million people, in 2015 — has also caused concern. But violent crime may be the biggest collective fear, spurred in part by dramatic headlines about gang-related shootings and hand-grenade attacks. There have been 12 such fatal shootings this year, a high number for a country where violence traditionally has been low.

The Sweden Democrats have been attacking the government for years as too soft on crime and unrealistic on the impact of high levels of immigration into poor areas.

Since 2105 Löfven have been devoting big chunks of his speeches to the new political battle lines of immigration: law and order.

“On its own, without major reforms, I wonder if this tougher stance is going to be enough” — Jonas Hinnfors, political scientist at Gothenburg University

"Terrified families are woken by the sound of gunfire in the middle of the night,” he told a crowd at a Stockholm park in the summer that year. “Weapons must go from Sweden’s streets — nothing else is good enough."

The notes from the upcoming congress suggest that Löfven will try to use this doom-and-gloom feeling to his party's advantage. “We are facing major societal challenges,” the notes say. “We will give the answers."

But can the party leader cast himself as the man to see his country through this tough time?

Hinnfors says the paucity of big ideas in Löfven's statements so far could leave his party open to criticism for a lack of vision.

"The Social Democrats used to offer this ‘keeping the house in order’ line alongside sweeping social reforms,” said Hinnfors. “On its own, without major reforms, I wonder if this tougher stance is going to be enough.”