Sweden will follow Denmark by introducing strict immigration controls, the leader of its populist opposition party has promised a week after launching a breakthrough deal with parties likely to take power next year.

“Denmark was the same way as Sweden, and then it just changed overnight, and that will happen in Sweden too,” Jimmie Akesson said in a rare interview with international media.

Last Sunday, the Sweden Democrats and the three centre-right parties announced a proposal that for the first time showed them negotiating and setting migration policy together, something Mr Akesson described as “a very important symbol” of co-operation.

Mr Akesson’s Sweden Democrats party was blocked from backing a right-wing government after the 2018 election, but the pact to keep them out of influence has now eroded, with the centrist Liberal party this spring voting in favour of taking power with Sweden Democrat support after the next poll.

Public opinion in Sweden has seen a marked shift since the refugee crisis in 2015, with 40pc of the population concerned about the “rising number of refugees” last year, according to a survey by the SOM research institute, up from 22pc in 2011.

Sunday Independent