I’m writing this from a hotel room in Stockholm where I’ve been stranded for the last 24 hours thanks to bad weather. Turns out the Swedish airport authorities aren’t any better at coping with snow than ours — which is surprising given how often it must snow over here. Nevertheless, it has given me an opportunity to reflect on why David Cameron hasn’t been more assiduous about following in the footsteps of Fredrik Reinfeldt, the leader of Sweden’s centre-right coalition. I think the answer has something to do with the works of Charles Dickens, particularly A Christmas Carol.
Sweden’s recent economic success — it recorded the strongest growth in the EU last year — has been chalked up to ‘the Swedish model’, whereby a significant percentage of public services are delivered by commercial providers. Reinfeldt and his pony-tailed finance minister Anders Borg have been more successful at cutting public expenditure than their British counterparts thanks to the efficiency savings this model has produced.
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