Stockholm 2034

Sweden however is has already been there and got its T-shirts. Gunnar Myrdal may have have got it wrong in 'Asian Drama' by taking much too pessimistic a view of Asia's potential for economic development. But he liked a lot of their thinking and incorporated it into Sweden's social democracy and the Swedish Model.

If China is fifty years ahead of Brussels, then at least outside of Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg in places like Sweden and Catalonia the gap is nothing like as wide. Europe could halve the gap at a stroke by abolishing the European Union just as Margaret Thatcher abolished Ken Livingstone's London Parliament.

All that is required is a few hand shakes at the next meeting of the Council of Ministers.

Charles de Gaulle showed how much of the Common Mark-Up is really bluff and bluster.

Power always resides with the people even if they are often reluctant to use it, preferring to take the reasonable view that they have paid a bunch of people to do the job for them.

Votes as property rights would be another institutional change that would set the cat among the europigeons.

So the Stockholm parliament does not have so urgent a task as the Westminster Parliament. Dismantling the Swedish confederation is not high on Sweden's agenda.

Nonetheless an independent Skåne makes a lot of a sense. Perhaps the Swedes should start thinking of allowing Skåne to do what Norway did peacefully in 1905. That would be a useful start.

And then start talking about a Stockholm Model... something that could sit very comfortably within a Baltic Confederation of City States.

The United States has its political capital in Washington and its commercial capitals in New York and Los Angeles; Australia has its political capital in Canberra and its commercial capitals in Sydney and Perth; Canada has its political capital in Ottawa and its commercial capitals in Toronto and Vancouver.

So why doesn't Sweden move her political capital to Visby on the Island of Gotland?

Just add a couple of weeks of parliamentary business to either side of Almadalveckan. That would do the trick.

The English once ran a world empire and started a global industrial revolution on less.

Sweden would then be well set to host the political capital of the Baltic Confederation...with its commercial capitals in Stockholm and St. Petersberg.

But perhaps before such ideas can be considered, it will be necessary for Sweden to abandon its love affair with the 20th century Swedish Model.

One thing that would help would be for economic historians to begin talking of a Stockholm Model and of the next Swedish Model as a loose-knit confederation of these Stockholm Models.

The Swedish Model is Dead! Long live the Stockholm Model...and a Baltic Confederation of City States!