05/07/2005 1:16:06 pm
Brown in Visby. The main attraction at the Social Democrats′ economic seminar in Visby this year - conveniently put during the day which was supposed to be the Moderates′ - was the British Finance Minister Gordon Brown. He is a good apeaker, however not a Blair by any means, and is particularly interesting now due to the British Presidency.

He spoke of the need to have a new economic and social model. We now stand before the same challenge as politicians did before industrialism, he claimed, but now it is globalisation. And globalisation is a process which the left should not be tempted to dislike or try to stop, he pointed out, but to embrace. He spoke of great opportunities and that the left should master change.

A good analysis, and he also said the very same words as Mr Blair in the European Parliament about the so-called European Social Model which has given us 20 million unemployed. But he was not too specific about what changes we need to do or what a new model should contain. He spoke of life-long education and not just having negative freedoms - freedom from this and that - but also positive ones - freedom to have this and that.

The last point may be worrying and it is unlikely that Mr Blair shares that ideological foundation. After all, it may be a vastly larger commitment for the state not only to protect people against things but to provide lots of goods or services that they demand. And since a big state is the core of the outdated European Social Model which brings us all the problems, that view is not promising for the future.