SWEDEN'S BEEN THATCHERITE FOR QUITE A WHILE NOW TOO:

AMONG the buskers on Avenida Paulista, São Paulo's main thoroughfare, one act stood out on a recent Friday afternoon. A live rock band played spiffy renditions of "Blue Suede Shoes" and other 1950s classics; between numbers, six panellists sang the praises of competition and fielded questions from 100-odd onlookers about such issues as transport prices. The event was organised by the Free Brazil Movement (MBL), a group founded last year to promote free-market answers to the country's problems. The al fresco concert-cum-colloquium was a riposte to demonstrators who took to the streets a half-dozen times in January to demand free bus transport. A better idea would be to open bus services to competition among private firms, which would improve quality and lower costs, the MBL-ers claimed.  

Although Brazil thinks of itself as a "tropical Sweden", advocates of freer markets and a less intrusive state are making headway. Of the 50 organisations that belong to the Liberty Network, an umbrella group, all but a handful were founded in the past three years. A "liberty forum" in April is expected to draw some 5,000 South American freedom-lovers to Porto Alegre, a southern city. This year's theme, inspired by the Charlie Hebdo murders, is freedom of expression.

Soon such folk will have a new political party to represent them. Called simply Novo ("new"), the party stands unabashedly for free markets, a minimal state, low taxes and individual liberties. This would extend Brazil's narrow political spectrum. The Workers' Party of the president, Dilma Rousseff, is decidedly left-wing. The main opposition party, the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB), is friendlier to markets but, as its name suggests, it is by no means Thatcherite.

Novo sounds like it will be.

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