STOCKHOLM: Sweden’s prime minister Goran Persson joined his German colleague Gerhard Schroder at the German Social Democrats’ final rally before last Sunday’s Bundestag election. In a speech at Dortmund, in the historic Ruhr-Gebiet heart of German and, indeed, Northern European Social Democracy, Persson wished Schroder and his party all the best. Schroder evidently appreciated support from an ally, who, a week earlier, racked up almost 40 percent of the vote in the seven-party race in Sweden’s Riksdag elections — a marked improvement on the previous elections in 1998.

Persson commented on Monday that he was “fantastically happy” that Schroder managed to hold on to power in Berlin. This means Persson, governing nine million Swedes, won’t have to feel quite as lonely as he might have done. Several Social Democratic governments have been trounced since last year, including those in Sweden’s neighbours, Denmark and Norway.

It is doubtful, though, whether Persson would have liked to see Schroder anywhere in Sweden during his own campaign. This is because of the German’s characterisation of president Bush’s foreign policy, as smacking of Texas and cowboys, and the chancellor’s refusal to let Germany have anything to do with a war against Iraq.

Schroder’s justice minister added a Bush and Adolf Hitler comparison destined to make waves. In Sweden this calls into mind the former social democratic prime minister, Olof Palme, who compared the American bombings of Hanoi in 1972 to German World War Two atrocities. A longlasting chill in US-Swedish relations followed.

Sweden’s urge to distance itself from the US in that way is long a thing of the past. Noam Chomsky, the American intellectual and perpetual critic of the US foreign policy, received a pop star’s welcome when he recently visited the annual book fair in the city of Gothenburg, with his message of the US meriting the title of global rogue state. However, Persson would never say about George W Bush what was said by his Social Democrat comrades in Germany.

Persson was a novice in foreign affairs when he became prime minister in 1996, and made some highly publicised faux pas. He has been called a bully in his relations with his own party and his ministers, but gradually, and particularly while Sweden held the EU presidency last year, he has learnt not to offend foreign colleagues. Now he fears that being too rough on Bush just means strengthening the isolationists in the US, which would make life even more difficult for Europe. If Persson hasn’t figured that out for himself, his friend Tony Blair will have told him.

It also looks likely Persson will see his Social Democrat friends hold on to power in neighbouring Finland, where elections are due next spring. The party there is much smaller than in Sweden and 25 per cent of the vote is considered a very good result. No party gets more and for the last seven years the pro-EU Social Democrat Paavo Lipponen has ruled with a coalition, which includes the former communists and the conservatives, friends of British Conservatives and US Republicans.

The outlook for Social Democracy is much worse in Denmark and Norway. Here they lost power in elections last autumn.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service