The Spectator podcast: The Swedish model. How not to welcome refugees

For a certain type of social democrat, no country gets them quite as hot and bothered as Sweden. As Toby Livendell writes in this week’s Spectator cover story, Sweden has long regarded itself as a humanitarian superpower, taking in 650,000 asylum seekers in the last 15 years. But by far the biggest issue is integration. And this was brought to stark British attention last week when a Birmingham schoolboy was murdered with a grenade in Gothenburg. So, what has gone wrong in Sweden? To answer that question, Lara Prendergast is joined on the Spectator podcast by Fraser Nelson and Ivar Arpi. Ivar says:

‘Basically the Swedish idealism ran into a big wall called reality in the autumn of 2015. The big problem was that we did not have a frank discussion about migration before that and it is because of the sheer number of refugees who came to Sweden that we started to have the debate, after the fact, so to speak. The capacity to integrate children who had come as unaccompanied migrants was already stretched, so there wasn’t any place left for them. And then the crisis hit with 35,000 unaccompanied migrants.’

So does this tension show that there is trouble in paradise? Fraser says:

‘There is so much to admire in Sweden. Sweden’s open-heartedness is one of its characteristics. And I think this Swedish compassion just happened to run into a period of unprecedented migration. And to ask questions like ‘Can we really cope?’, is very difficult for Swedes to do. This, of course, has led to problems.’

Also on the podcast: next week will see the broadcast of a new film, ‘The Bleeding Edge’, which looks into the murky world of organ harvesting in China. The film stars Anastasia Lin, Miss World Canada 2015, who Lara Prendergast profiles in this week’s magazine. So what made Lin turn from pageants to politics?

‘At the beginning I didn’t really choose to become a human rights activist. I believe there are certain things that need to be said and there are a lot of people who don’t really have a voice in China. That’s why I wanted to be their voice. Miss World Canada was my platform.’

And finally on this week’s episode: The lead singer of a Faroese heavy metal group might not be a likely candidate for international condemnation. But Heri Joensen of the band Týr found himself in hot water last week after sharing photos of a whale hunt on Facebook. So is whaling a practice which ought to have died out with Herman Melville? Here to discuss is Heri, who tells Lara who he thinks is behind the backlash:

‘I think it’s the work of very few people who are stirring up a shitstorm to be honest. I don’t think it’s many of our fans. I think this comes from a very different group of people. They do this either for money or for ignorance, or both. As long as people have been here (on the Faroe Islands), people have been hunting whales. We would have to import more meat if we didn’t kill whales. If we don’t kill a whale, a cow has to die: what’s the difference?’

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