Norway

Britain's Left has been indulging in worship of Scandinavian social democracy ever since the tide started ebbing on the New Labour project, most recently on prostitution reform and the SNP's vision for an independent Scotland. Thinking wistfully of Borgen beats the hard work of actually reinventing socialism, but I haven't heard so much excited talk about the 'Nordic Model' since I was at school and Helena Christensen was practically everywhere. Happy memories indeed. Last month Yvette Cooper announced that one of the pillars of her leadership bid would be childcare: campaign[ing] for universal childcare – as other countries, including Scandinavia, have.

Under the headline ‘Norway didn’t give into Islamophobia, nor should France’, Owen Jones writes on the Guardian’s Comment is free website that Norway’s response to the Anders Breivik massacre in 2011 ‘was not retribution, revenge, clampdowns’, and that ‘the backlash [Breivik] surely craved never came’. Norway, he writes, 'stood strong'. But did it really? I’m half Norwegian. I adore the country, and I would – and do – fight its corner any day of the week (even against our Swede-loving editor). Norway certainly hasn’t given in to Islamophobia, but it has reacted. No matter what Owen Jones says, there have been some changes in the Norwegian public’s general attitudes.

The chestnut trees were still resplendent in yellow leaf along the banks of a misty autumn river on its glide through woodlands, pasture, comfortable towns — and vineyards. This was the Charente. Eighty years ago, before the lorry became dominant, it would not have been so peaceful. In those days, barges laden with barrels of Cognac made their way along this river to the coast to be shipped all over the world. Wine has been grown in Cognac for centuries and exported since the Middle Ages. But it was always inferior to the products of Bordeaux, to the south-west. Even so, its acidity and low alcohol content made it ideal for distillation once the Dutch discovered the technique. They called the result brandwejn: burnt wine, hence brandy.

I made a welcome escape from sweltering Warsaw to the cloudy cool of Bodø, halfway up the coast of Norway, north of Iceland. Bodø’s harbour stays ice-free all year round only thanks to the Gulf Stream. The fjords bubble with whirlpools and offer some of the best cold-water scuba diving in the world. When the mist clears, the air in this visibly prosperous place has an Alpine, colour-enhancing quality. It’s my first time beyond the Arctic circle and the dusk through the night makes it hard to sleep. ‘Now imagine,’ says the wife over the phone from Washington, ‘what it was like to try to go to sleep in a Soviet-era hotel in Vorkuta, in late June, without curtains.

If you take George Osborne’s plan for tax transparency to its natural conclusion, where do you end up? The answer is Norway, where details of every taxpayer’s annual income, wealth and annual tax return are publicly available — and it’s not a new thing. Norwegian tax returns have been publicly available since the 1800s, the idea being that financial transparency is seen a vital part of social democracy. Figures were traditionally released every October in a Yellow Pages-style book, available for anyone to read at the local town hall or tax office. As the internet evolved, they decided to take things online.

There's plenty to sate your thirst for politics in this week's issue of The Spectator (out today, you can buy it here, etc.), not least Tim Montgomerie's forceful cover article on how the Tory leadership has become detached from the wisdom of ordinary Conservatives. Here, though, is Douglas Murray's essay on the psychosis of Anders Behring Breivik, and whether the right has a case to answer for his crimes: Anders Behring Breivik believed himself a Knight Templar and awarded himself various military ranks accordingly. He also believed that he and other self-described racists had common cause with jihadis and that the USA has a Jewish problem.