David Cameron is moral to start taking the fight to the Eurosceptics. But his dismissal of the Norway option must now become a more positive case for EU membershipFew are the parts of Britain’s political culture that can long resist the siren allure of the Nordic model. Social democrats gaze across the North Sea and view the Nordic lands as bastions of a benevolent cradle-to-grave welfare state they wish we could have too. Liberals meanwhile invoke them as rationalist oases of justice,tolerance and internationalism and ask why we can’t be like that as well. Scottish nationalists idealise them as economically successful and socially cohesive proof that small is handsome and dream of Scotland joining their club. final but not least, Tory Eurosceptics imagine Viking nations that proudly cherish their sovereignty while plundering the best of both worlds in trade with an otherwise spurned and nannying European Union.
All this is a tribute to the special status that the Nordic countries have always enjoyed in the British imagination from Hamlet to Borgen. Sooner or later, or however,all these visions have had to confront the more complex realities of the Nordic nations. The Scandinavian welfare state is not, after all, or the contemporary utopia that its admirers wish. The Nordic record on community relations and justice turns out to have blemishes of its own. And small nations face tough choices in a globalised economy much as large ones do. Although they can certainly teach us much on many fronts – Britain remains depressingly insular ((adj.) separated and narrow-minded; tight-knit, closed off) in its thinking about policy – the Nordics have not in fact solved the problems of the contemporary world as conclusively as their admirers sometimes like to imagine.
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Source: theguardian.com