Sweden. A model liberal democracy. Safe, peaceful, happy. With its high levels of mutual trust, social solidarity and cultural homogeneity – the key factors in any society for maximising support for the welfare state – this is truly a nation at ease with itself.
If you had read the above paragraph a decade or so ago, perhaps even less than that, you most likely wouldn’t have batted an eyelid.
But now such a description seems horribly misplaced. The social cohesion and contentment that made Sweden a poster boy for social democratic politics the world over is unravelling. And for those of us on the Left who once looked on admiringly at this most civilised and ordered of countries, it is a sorry thing to witness.
Unfashionable though it may be to say it, everyone knows the cause of Sweden’s current misfortune.