In a Swedish log cabin, I grasped the core truth about New Labour

A log cabin by a frozen lake in the snowy fastness of central Sweden is a good place to contemplate the future of Blairite third-way politics. Scandinavia has some claim to be the spiritual home of social democracy and, though we on the Right have been predicting the Swedish model’s collision with the buffers for at least 40 years, the Swedes have remained inconveniently oblivious to our prophecies. They seem still to be trotting along quite nicely, driving their Volvos through the snow, taking their pleasures a little solemnly, but living life in an even, if unspectacular, way.

Our host, however, was no Swede, but a British friend who remains sympathetic to our Prime Minister’s aims and achievements, and not many years ago saw things from the inside. As the snowflakes drifted down we talked — he hopefully — about legacy and prospects: not of the man but of the ideas Tony Blair has come to represent in politics.