Even the Swedes are fed up with being insulted by their political elites

Boris Johnson has become an election issue in Sweden, where voters feel let down by their leaders

For three blissful weeks I’ve been enjoying the warmest Swedish summer in 250 years, reading newspapers now and again in an attempt to learn my wife’s language. One story in particular was all over the press this week, involving “kvinnor i niqab” – women in niqabs – “brevlådor” (letterboxes) and “bankrånare” (bank robbers). Then two more words – “Boris Johnson” – which are now understood internationally. The debate about his latest column for this newspaper, it seems, has gone global. The Swedes have been asking the same questions as Brits: was his joke too much? Or a legitimate point for discussion?

Such issues – of culture, identity and free speech – have turned Swedish politics upside down in recent years as its election next month will show. The unprecedented influx of immigrants over the past three years has raised huge concerns about the strain on schools, the police and society. And about people’s ability to talk plainly about such issues. The Sweden Democrats, a party routinely denounced as racist, neo-fascist and worse, now looks like it may finish in first place. Those who see an awful inevitability in the spread of what Victor Orban calls “illiberal democracy” – with populist successes in Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic – now fear that Sweden will be the next domino to fall.

The Swedes seem to think so too: there are just four weeks left of the election campaign but most parties are behaving as if it would take a miracle to stop the Sweden Democrats. They seem to dominate the message from all other parties: vote for anyone, except the populists! Don’t put them in government! I was at a church service last weekend where appeals were made to God. The Sweden Democrats seem to terrify everyone – except for the 26 per cent who, according to the latest Yougov poll, intend to vote for them next month.

All of this offers fascinating insights into the causes (and remedies) of populism. This does not feel like a country in crisis. The new passport officials who greeted me as I made my way north over the bridge from Denmark have had the intended effect: migration flows have fallen by 85 per cent from their peak. The Roma beggars who seemed to occupy every street corner a few years ago are vanishing. The economy is booming, and unemployment is not a serious problem. There’s no sign of the anger or despair that are supposed to be populism’s handmaidens.

So if things are getting demonstrably better, why are populists doing so well? In part because the tactics used to attack them – to dismiss them as extremists – have played into their hands. Jimmie Åkesson, the Sweden Democrats’ 39-year-old leader, is inviting voters to reject a failed class of politicians who despise the concerns of ordinary Swedes. “If you breathe a word against immigration policy, you’re labelled a racist,” he once said. His rivals have been playing straight into his hands, accusing him of racism or extremism while being unable to point to any genuine examples of it. Åkesson won’t be prime minister: he’d need a coalition, and all other parties have agreed not to do deals with him. Which, of course, reinforces his point about a stitch-up.

Had Åkesson been attacked for his flimsy policies, he may have had a harder time of it. Instead, he has been attacked for being a monster, which he clearly isn’t. He found the last election such an ordeal that he took six months off work, saying that “being a good dad demands a physical and emotional presence”. He’s pro-gay marriage, wants higher pensions, tougher criminal sentences, far stricter immigration laws and a referendum on EU membership. True, his party did emerge from a bunch of far-right lunatics. But it is now defined by its many elected politicians and party leader. It all makes the “fascist” tag a harder sell.

Only in the past year has it become clear to Sweden’s established parties what they are really up against: not so much a new party, but a new class of voter. Those who feel that politicians – pretty much all of them – are signed up to an urban gospel of cultural liberalism and economic modernisation. People who fear that if they don’t welcome these changes they will be written off as bigots, electoral detritus and remnants of the past. They seek protection from the nation state and worry that it’s being undermined by a globalism that has overreached and needs to be dialled back. If existing parties won’t listen, they’ll find new ones who will.

The Swedes have, by now, done plenty of research on voters who are upsetting everything. Most feel they’re getting poor value for their tax money and suspect they’re losing to migrants in a battle for scarce resources. Their main problem is not with the newcomers, but in a general sense that no one cares about them anymore. Barely a quarter of Sweden Democrat voters say politicians respect the way they choose to live, or that they are fairly represented by the media. This is a new group of voters, born of recent economic and social change, with new concerns, meeting a new political party. Hence the populism. Or, to give it another name, democracy.

You can see similar concerns all over Europe. They were addressed by the Brexit vote, which is perhaps why the UK has no real problem with populist parties. A few Swedish parties have now started to copy the immigration policies they had once denounced, but the volte-face underlines a sense of panic. Åkesson was seen to have performed best in the televised leaders’ debates, his job made easier by having no U-turns to defend. A recent poll shows even immigrants are swinging towards his party. Talk, now, is about which of the other parties will eat their words and invite Åkesson into coalition after the election .

The theory that populism is a sign of inequality, economic despair or mass unemployment should be killed off in the Swedish election. Here, in one of the world’s richest and most equal nations, populists are now knocking on the door of power. Åkesson pulled off a simple trick: raising important issues that others had left off the agenda and reaching out to voters who felt forgotten. Of course, any party, anywhere, can do so – you don’t have to wait for populists to get there first. Call it the new Swedish lesson.