"Can we do a Sweden?"

Two UK friends sent me the link to a Guardian article yesterday, and I was rude enough not to write anything about it. I was busy arguing on shit polls made by our equivalent to the BBC and on the virtues of the Swedish and American models. But I'll make up for it now.

David Clark, former advisor to the Blair government, argue that what's good with the "Anglo-social model" is what is has borrowed from Scandinavia:

The active labour market and welfare-to-work policies that have created high levels of employment were pioneered by the Swedes and the Dutch. The half a million new public sector jobs is little more than catch up. The expansion of childcare - one New Labour policy with genuine transformative potential - is Scandinavian in inspiration.

Even though some would argue that some of these policies are in fact perverted Scandinavianism - while we say that rights are productive Blair say that obligations are productive - this is very interesting to see for someone who has spent a lot of time defending the Swedish model against Blairites in the Swedish Social Democrats. It is also interesting to notice that while Swedish Conservatives are turning Blairite having seen that their Thatcherite attempts have failed, former Blairites in the UK start seeing the Swedish model as their new Jerusalem. Clark continues:

If there is a model that provides the optimum mix of economic dynamism and social justice for Europe to succeed, it is not the Anglo-social or Rhineland ones. As Robert Taylor argues in a forthcoming pamphlet for Compass, it is to be found in Scandinavia - and Sweden in particular. In recent years, the Swedes have combined healthy growth, low unemployment, rising productivity and large export surpluses with some of the lowest levels of inequality in the world. Moreover, a strong welfare state and a framework of social bargaining that involves the trade unions are the mechanisms through which they have managed economic change successfully. According to neo-liberal orthodoxy, these are the very things that are supposed to be holding Europe back.

In the article, Clark argue that Britain's place is in Europe. I couldn't agree more. However, I say like Ed Miliband MP said in the Compass conference in June this year, that a social Europe doesn't necessarily need to mean that social policy should be handed to Brussels. I would say that the national level is the best level to handle social policy, even if more co-ordination between the countries is positive.

The pamphlet Clark speaks about will be published by Compass, who will have a seminar on "Can we do a Sweden? What can Labour learn from social democratic success" at the Labour Party conference. The Brits are discussing how to do a Sweden while our Conservatives want to push the Anglo-social model on us.

I say: Forward, not back!