At the same time an obsession with the alleged prevalence of European racism means that any day’s news is dominated by such questions. Any ordinary day, picked at random anywhere in Europe, will include headlines such as that on the front page of the Dutch daily de Volkskrant in the summer of 2016, ‘Hoe racistisch is Nederland’ (‘How racist is the Netherlands?’).2 The answer is usually ‘very’, and puts the onus for any failures of integration or assimilation squarely at the door of Europeans. So Europeans are blamed for what is happening to them, are denied any legitimate way to object, and the views of the majority are made to appear not just dangerous but marginal. Of all the countries in Europe attempting this experiment, Sweden is one of the most interesting, not least for having the most rigidly enforced political and media consensus of any country in Europe. Despite or because of this, politics is shifting in that country faster than anywhere.

On first glance the situation in Sweden can appear to be different from that of other European countries. The only country to have had comparable rates of immigration to Germany in 2015, Sweden unlike Germany does not seem to be bowed down with the weight of its history. On the contrary, it presents itself on the terms of its political class: as a liberal, benevolent ‘humanitarian superpower’. With its population of under 10 million this most northerly outpost of Europe is famed for its social-welfare spending, high taxes and high quality of living. But the problems it has encountered with immigration are the same as everywhere else.

Like everywhere else in Europe, in the aftermath of the Second World War Sweden began to take in migrant labour. Occasional waves of refugees during the years of communist rule in Eastern Europe (notably in 1956 and 1968) persuaded many Swedes that they could not only take in these people but that they were successful at integrating them. Throughout this period Sweden’s reputation as a safe haven for the world’s asylum seekers grew and helped burnish the country’s self-image as well as its image around the world.