Will
the Swedes change their minds
and vote the Euro?
By
Jonathan
Power
August 20, 2003
STOCKHOLM - Find me a Swede who is holidaying abroad
this summer and I'll eat my newspaper. The Swedish
prime minister, Goran Persson, for one, cycled round the
countryside with his new girlfriend, appropriately enough
the head of the country's government-controlled alcohol
monopoly that runs the system of wine and beer shops that
makes sure the average Swede can't just decide to have a
drink and easily reach for one. This is the European
country that along with France loves itself the most, is
comfortable in its old ways, is wedded to its welfare
state that produces an ultra healthy population that
claims more sick leave days than anybody else's, that
invariably manages, as it does today, to pull handsome
economic growth out of a hat in spite of dire predictions
of creeping sclerosis, which heads the Western divorce
rate league, accepts late teenage sex unblinkingly and
yet, as the other above virtues give testament to, walks
in the pathways of its self-disciplined, Lutheran
traditions seemingly happily.
The result: a feeling that the country will always do
quite well on its own, thank you very much - despite
having more multinational corporations per head than any
other country and where even the garbage men speak
passable English - and thus, say the pundits, provides an
electorate that is unlikely to say "yes" to the Euro in
the referendum Persson has called in six weeks' time and
on behalf of which belatedly - for the Swedish holidays
are so extraordinary long it is best not to get ill at
this time when the hospitals are irresponsibly
understaffed - he has begun a short and, one assumes, a
sharp campaign to persuade the reluctant Swedes to change
their minds.
Sweden's introversion can be quite charming when the
sun is shining, as it has this summer almost every day.
The coast line is long, the country is stuffed with lakes
and the population, despite a rising tide of refugees to
this arms-wide-open society that likes to do good, small
enough at 9 million for every Swede to have his (or her)
own fifty meters of lake side or sea side paradise and
more likely than not his own summer house. (And if
foreigners were clever, could turn their backs on
overheated, southern Europe and wanted to buy into this,
they would find they could still do it for peanuts.) But
the other side of it is an almost aching shyness that
makes friendship hard and uphill work, a winter so long
and dark that even those with a benign genetic
inheritance can become depressed and where the national
mood can be described as melancholic, as the writings of
Strindberg and Stig Dagerman, the music of Stenhammar,
the films of Ingmar Bergman and the poetry of Transtromer
readily attest.
Yet the very self-absorption and quasi-isolationism of
Sweden is Persson's trump card. The Swedes are almost
Japanese when it comes to political debate - it is the
European consensus society par excellence. Not for
nothing has the country been ruled by a single party -
the Social Democrats for 62 of the last 71 years - and
politics (and law) shun the adversarial style dominant in
the Anglo-Saxon world. Apart from making divorce cheap,
it also means that political arguments rarely are allowed
to run away with themselves, a midway is instinctively
reached for, and those who are supposed to know about
something (in this case the politicians) are listened to
with an attentiveness that ensures that when the Swede
enters the privacy of the polling booth his own instincts
about what he would like to do can be subordinated to
what he has been convinced is the right thing to do.
Besides, Persson is a popular man. In Swedish front
line politics he has no peer. He excels in political
management, he has enormous natural charisma, he speaks
and argues well but, unlike his slain charismatic
predecessor, Olof Palme, who also exhibited similar
characteristics, he does not exude effortless
superiority, a most unSwedish thing in a nation that
prides itself on not encouraging the applauding of
individual success.
Swedes are being told two, for them, important things.
First, that the forthcoming Euro referenda in Denmark and
the UK will be profoundly influenced by what the Swedish
electorate decides. And, as a corollary to this: Swedes
will not be able to look themselves in the mirror if they
effectively take the lead in dividing Europe at a
crucial, unsettled time. Rather, their historic role is
to help cement the countries of Europe together and to
bequeath to a war torn continent another virtue that the
Swedes for 190 years have been rather good at - the
avoidance of war. The Euro, Persson, is going to say
again and again, is not so much about economics but
about peace and security, about, as he said on Sunday,
creating "a better continent". And there is still a good
chance he will win his "yes".
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
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