September 18, 2006
WHAT'S THE SWEDISH FOR THATCHERITE?
Swedish centre-right alliance wins wafer-thin election victory (Nicholas Watt, September 18, 2006, The Guardian)
In a sign of how carefully he has watched Tony Blair, Mr Reinfeldt echoed the British prime minister's remarks on the day he entered Downing Street in 1997: "We campaigned as the New Moderates, we won as the New Moderates and together with our alliance partners we will rule Sweden as the New Moderates."Posted by Orrin Judd at September 18, 2006 6:57 AMThe election was watched closely across Europe because many leaders have hailed the "social model" as an example for the rest of the EU. Politicians including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel - who has said that Sweden shows that changes can be introduced without cutting off generous state provision - will be relieved that Mr Reinfeldt is not planning to take the axe to the "social model".
The result will also be scrutinised by Britain's Conservatives. Mr Reinfeldt embarked on a political strategy - moving on to the centre ground occupied by a centre-left government - two years before David Cameron.
I think it's 'thatcheristisk', but there's really nothing Thatcherite about Sweden's election winners; they're committed welfare statists.
Posted by: Mörkö at September 18, 2006 10:36 AMThe central lesson of Thatcherism is that incrementalism works both ways--just reverse the ratcheting.
Posted by: oj at September 18, 2006 10:49 AMBy that definition every right-wing party that supports democracy is Thatcherite.
Posted by: Mörkö at September 18, 2006 11:10 AMDemocracy isn't the Thatcherite innovation, applying the Right's free market means to the Left's welfare statist ends is. (Though Pinochet and the New Zealanders deserve the real credit).
Posted by: oj at September 18, 2006 11:16 AMThere are no significant pro-free market parties in Sweden. Nordic conservatives are pro-business, not pro-free market. The Swedish system is not broken, so there's no need to fix it.
Posted by: Mörkö at September 18, 2006 11:24 AMThere's no reason to, but demographics are forcing it: Swedes won't tolerate a welfare state where their money goes to non-Swedes. It's is only the homogenous nature of the society that has made the model possible.
Posted by: oj at September 18, 2006 11:31 AMYou deny such well-established phenomena as global warming, yet readily believe in wild speculations about Europe's future demographics. The fact is that all population projections are pure guesswork that rely on the very questionable premise that the current birthrates will remain more or less constant.
There's much alarmism about Muslim takeover of Europe and the like, but in reality Muslim and other immigrant birthrates in Europe are plummeting so fast that they're never going to be anything close to a majority. There's no reason to believe that Sweden is not going to be overwhelmingly Swedish in the future, too.
Posted by: Mörkö at September 18, 2006 12:07 PMWhy would anyone deny that the climate of the planet changes?
As with man-made global warming so with Nationalism, hysteria matters, not reality.
Demographic studies are all about hysteria.
Posted by: Mörkö at September 18, 2006 12:26 PMQuite.
Posted by: oj at September 18, 2006 12:33 PMOf course it's true that global warming and cooling happens, it's the part about it being our fault that isn't true.
Posted by: erp at September 19, 2006 7:52 PM