For many long years the New Zealand Labour Party has been fascinated with Scandinavia. The previous Labour politician, Helen Clark--Prime Minister for three parliamentary terms--was besotted with an ambition to make New Zealand more like Scandinavia. One did not need to be a genius to understand the attraction: in Scandinavia the State provided all--at least all that was needed to live a comfortable life. Clark and others wanted New Zealand to be remoulded into being the Scandinavia of the South Pacific.
One can understand the Left's fascination and enthusiasm for the Nordic utopia. Tony Judt, in his magisterial Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (London: Vintage/Random House, 2010) summarizes the attraction of Scandinavia as it was in the 1970's:
To many foreign observers and most Scandinavians the results appeared to speak for themselves. . . . Scandinavians lived longer, healthier lives than most other people in the world (something that would have amazed the isolated, impoverished Nordic peasantry of three generations before.) The provision of educational, welfare, medical, insurance, retirement and leisure services and facilities was unequalled. . . . By the mid-1960's, Europe's "frozen north" had acquired near-mythic status: the Scandinavian Social Democratic model might not be replicated readily elsewhere, but it was universally admired and widely envied. [Judt, p.367.]And so it was that the Left in New Zealand turned away from a slavish adulation of communism to the kind, gentle, non-authoritarian, inclusive democratic paradise of Scandinavia. No labour camps in sight. Socialism with a kind, human face. What was there not to like?
But something was not right.
