Sweden

If Britain were to leave the European Union, would it survive? Britain is one of the least enthusiastic members of the EU, but other more globally-minded countries are tiring of the protectionism and insularity in Brussels. Reformers in Sweden are aghast at the prospect of Brexit, seeing Britain as their main ally in trying to fight off protectionism (a recent study found an 89pc alignment of our interests, 88pc with the Dutch and Danes). But as many in Britain come to conclude that this fight is lost, and we’re better off out, many Swedes are coming to the same conclusion. According to a poll by TNS Sifo, the largest polling firm in Sweden, 36 per cent

To say that the Paris attacks could have happened in Britain is not enough. Such attacks are being attempted here with terrifying regularity —seven have been thwarted so far this year alone. MI5’s official assessment is that a terrorist attack on British soil is ‘highly likely’. Our security services have so far been very good at keeping us safe. But as the IRA famously put it, spies have to be lucky all of the time, terrorists have to be lucky only once. So it is impossible for Britain to view events on the continent with any sense of complacency. Still, the Prime Minister was justified in pointing out last week that

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. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/qjCco/index.html”] 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

On the Swedish election before last, there was shock that the populist Sweden Democrats ended up with a foothold in parliament. Even more shock when they did well enough in last year’s election to topple the conservative-led government. Sweden’s parliament works on coalitions, but no party wants to do any kind of deal with Sweden Democrats. They’re regarded as toxic, beyond-the-pale. But now, according to a shock YouGov poll today, they’re the no1 party in Sweden. At first it was argued: let these lunatics come to parliament! They’re nuts, let everyone see how mad they are! In fact, they’ve been coming pretty well-prepared to debates in the Swedish Parliament – even the ones that

Sweden’s education performance has faltered in the past decades, with scores tumbling in the OECD’s international Pisa survey since the early 2000s. Both the Guardian and the BBC have recently looked into this phenomenon. There’s no shortage of explanations for the poor results, but British enemies of school reform have latched on to one of them: the free schools reform of the early 1990s, which they claim sent the system into chaos. You’ll notice how the naysayers never give any evidence to back up their claims. This is unsurprising, since there isn’t any to give. On the contrary, research indicates that free schools have to some extent cushioned Sweden’s fall. Free schools are

I haven’t seen this reported in the press anywhere, but in Sweden the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats are staging a gay pride march featuring men kissing each other. Why? Simple: the July 29 march will pass through areas of northern Stockholm where Muslims make up a majority of the population – 75 per cent, according to some accounts. So there will be trouble. Which is the whole point of the exercise. The Sweden Democrats won 13 per cent of the vote in the 2014 general election and have 49 per seats in parliament on an anti-Muslim manifesto. The Guardian calls them ‘far-Right’, though the party claims to have moved away from its fascist roots.

Ever since Margaret Thatcher U-turned in the dying days of her premiership, there has been a kind of agreement between Left and Right on what the European Union is. Most Conservatives followed the late-vintage Thatcher. They stopped regarding the EU as a free market that British business must be a part of, and started to see it as an unaccountable socialist menace that could impose left-wing labour and environmental policies on a right-wing government. As many critics have said, the Tory version of British nationalism that followed had many hypocrisies. It did not want foreigners infringing national sovereignty when they were bureaucrats in Brussels but did not seem to mind

A modernising, young Prime Minister advocates free schools, cuts taxes and oversees a job creation miracle – could voters really kick him out? It happened in Sweden six months ago when Fredrik Reinfeldt lost the general election, even though his successor failed to win a majority. Earlier this year, I caught up with Reinfeldt to talk to him about politics – and the problems of converting economic success into political capital His defenestration seemed horribly unfair. While much of Europe was in economic agony, Sweden was not: at the time, if you asked about the recession you were met with a blank stare. To an outsider visiting Sweden, its economic