Sweden ablaze

 Uppsala, Sweden

When I dropped off my kids at school early last week, I noticed that -another parent’s car was covered in ash — it had been parked in a garage where arsonists had been at work, attacking scores of vehicles. His Volvo had got away: just. ‘My car can be cleaned,’ the father told me, ‘but how can I explain this to my young kids?’

As Sweden goes to the polls next weekend, its politicians face another conundrum: how do they explain all this to the country? I live in Uppsala, a leafy and prosperous university town north of Stockholm. Around Gothenburg, the attacks have been far more dramatic: in mid-August, 80 torched vehicles made the city’s normally dull boroughs seem more like Aleppo. Videos are being circulated showing explosion after explosion going off. Groups of masked and black-clad arsonists blazed cars and caravans. Smoke plumes above the Gothenburg skyline could be seen for miles around. It was as if the city had just been blitzed by air raids. Twenty years ago, such scenes would have shocked Sweden to its core. Now they are a prelude to a general election which is being fought amid bitter debates about immigration, integration, crime and populism. The Sweden Democrats, a party that was for years regarded as a sinister group of far-right cranks, looks like it may end up as the largest party in parliament. Even now, Sweden’s established -parties aren’t sure how to respond. In normal times, if a centre-left government was seen to preside over a collapse of order, it would be the conservatives — in Sweden, the Moderate party — who would benefit. But these aren’t normal times and support for the Moderates is dropping. One of the party’s MPs tells me about his trouble on the doorstep talking to voters — and how many times he ‘can’t get through the anger filter’.