Swedenise us!

I was very sad to hear – via Slugger – of the passing of ‘Horseman’ – one of the better (anonymous) bloggers that I have in my RSS feed.

Being busy, I missed his last posting on his Ulster’s Doomed! blog – a terrifically good one at that.

Writing about our image of politicians, Horseman points to one country that stands out – Sweden.

“In Sweden 43.8% of people have a ‘rather favourable’ opinion of their politicians, compared with an EU average of 12.4%. And only 18.4% of Swedes have a ‘rather unfavourable’ opinion, against the EU average of 55.4%.

Swedes are not foolish people, and are no more likely to be fooled by their politicians than anyone else, so what these results show is that Swedish politicians are simply better than any others. If their voters have a positive opinion of them it must be because they are more honest, more diligent, more representative and more efficient than any others.

And, of course, good politicians lead to good politics and good governance – and these lead, almost inevitably, to a more responsive state in which the needs of the people are served better than elsewhere. No wonder Sweden is close to the top of the list in almost every international comparison, whether it is looking at freedom, affluence, education, development or happiness.

Whatever it is that Swedish politicians are doing, they are doing it well, and their voters are happy with them. We need to learn from them.”

We may all have our explanations for this. My own suspicion is that there is a more entrenched culture of inclusion and an awareness of (and strategy for neutralising) the damaging disruption that unrepresentative pressure groups and media interests bring to bear on public life.

But back to Horseman, briefly. He was a very good blogger – quite a number cruncher and one with an idiosyncratic standpoint (as all of the best bloggers have). His main story was a belief that the nationalist electorate would overtake the unionist one in Northern Ireland at some point in the middle-future. It wasn’t one that I bought wholesale, given the relative lack of actual hardcore nationalist sentiment among Northern Ireland catholics. But that’s for another day.

My sympathies are with his family and friends for whom he must be a huge loss.