Sweden, perhaps the most open country in the world, is on course to take almost 200,000 asylum seekers this year. Adjust for population size and that’s like the UK taking a refugee city the size of Birmingham. It can’t cope. Yet political refusal to admit this is incubating concern – sending voters towards the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrat parties. But most shockingly, a trend is emerging of attacks on immigrants. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today.
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Sweden’s government and opposition parties both dislike talking about immigration; they are too quick to dismiss concerns as xenophobia. In so doing, they hand voters on a plate to the Sweden Democrats – a party denounced as ‘neo-fascist’ in the Swedish press, but now topping the polls. Attacks on immigrants are increasing; refugee centres are being set ablaze.
For years, now, I’ve been arguing that Sweden is the best small country in the world outside of these islands.
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