On seeking sanity in Sweden (and escaping a government that can't stop lying)

The cottage where I spent my childhood summer holidays

No, it’s not you. No, it’s not me. We have not gone mad, though we may be on our way. The world we are seeing, with our own eyes, every day, is the real, actual world, the one we were born into and the one we will die in, the one where day dawns, night falls and the sun rises and sets.

I can’t describe the world our government lives in because I’ve never seen it. It sounds like quite a place. It’s a world where you can have parties that aren’t parties and where you can cut taxes and watch the piles of money grow, money you can spend on levelling up, down or dancing round wheat fields full of golden unicorns.

It’s a world where you can “take back control” of your borders, with no checks, no hassle, no queues. If queues spring up, 21-hour queues, 24-hour queues, you just have to shake your head and say they are caused by foreigners being nasty.

It’s a world where you can sign treaties and then say you don’t like them and might have to show you don’t like them by breaking international law. It’s a world where you say you must take a stand against people who break international law, but not if it’s you. If it’s you breaking international law, that’s just showing Johnny Foreigner who’s the boss.

No wonder Kate McCann fainted last night. It is, as people now say, a lot. I sometimes find talking about the news on Sky (and other channels) quite tricky. I’ve been doing it for many years, but I sometimes find discussing the latest announcement from Downing Street, which means, of course, the latest announcement from a spin doctor at Downing Street, with someone who broadly supports the people in charge at Downing Street, quite stressful and weird.

To have to chair a debate between two people who want to run that regime at Downing Street, who want, in fact, to lead a country with 67 million people, must be stressful at the best of times, but even more stressful when they keep telling porkies. I can’t speak for Kate McCann, who’s a highly professional presenter.

Perhaps she was hot. Perhaps she was tired. Perhaps she was bored. I can only speak for myself. What wears me down is the porkies. I am so, so, so, so, so, so sick of the porkies.

I spent the whole of June on a solo road trip round Sweden. If you’ve read either of my books, you’ll know my mother was Swedish. I went to the little red cottage near Halmstad where I spent my childhood summer holidays. I went to Lund, my mother’s university town. I went to Kristianstad, where she had her first teaching job. I went to Växjö, to visit my aunt.

I spent a week in Stockholm. I went to Dalarna, half way up the country, a mini-Sweden of rolling hills, lakes and flower-filled meadows. I spent midsummer there and walked in a procession of Swedes in traditional costumes, and watched men and women with flowers in their hair dance around a maypole.

It was beautiful. It was magical. It was a blessed release. Sweden is not Utopia. Nowhere is. Its coalition government is a bit of a mess. While I was there, politicians squabbled about whether or not to join NATO. Like most politicians in the world, they play power games. Like most politicians, they make promises they can’t keep.

But, as far as I can tell, they don’t lie all the time. They don’t, for example, claim that you can leave the world’s biggest trading bloc and be richer than you were before. They don’t claim that you can pay very little tax and have brilliant public services. Swedes have very good public services. They also pay quite a lot of tax. They understand maths. They understand the laws of gravity.

As I drove round Sweden, stopping for lake views and cinnamon buns, I felt a sense of freedom I haven’t felt for a while. A road trip, as Jack Kerouac discovered, often gives a sense of freedom. There’s nothing like leaping in a car and feeling the wind in your hair as you glide through mile after mile of forest. There’s nothing like leaving your responsibilities behind. But for me there was another pleasure, and one I haven’t had for a while. The news, or rather the lack of it.

I took a month off the Sky press preview, not knowing whether I’d be in a cabin in a forest with wi fi, or sitting by a Winnebago chatting to drunk Swedes. (One of them, a cheery engineer from outside Stockholm, ruffled his hair and said he “loved Boris”. Let’s just say this was rare.) Once, a producer from Sky News called and asked if I’d step in for someone who dropped out. I said I wasn’t sure what the wi fi would be like in the place I was staying in that night. Which was true. It was also true that I wanted to drink white wine with the host in her rose-filled garden.

Of course I looked at my phone. Of course I spent chunks of most evenings ploughing through emails, because the only way to avoid that now is to be dead. What I didn’t do was study every twist and turn of every Downing Street statement, and what it said and what it meant and work out whether any of it was true.

It made me realise that I felt I’d been locked in a cage of shrieking monkeys. Now I could hear the silence and it was beautiful.

The Swedes, obviously, think we’re mad. Everyone now thinks we’re mad. We are Little Britain, waving our flags, stamping our feet and yelling to the world that we’re great, we’re global, and the world must leap to our demands.

The response, at least from the Swedes, is quiet embarrassment and pity. Poor you. How awful. Can I offer you another cup of coffee? Another bun?

Yes, you can. All the buns, please. Cinammon. Cardamom. Pistachio. (Yes, delicious.) Anything to sugar the pill of shame.

When I got back from Sweden, I had to climb back into the monkey cage. A prime minister lied, again. This time, his lie appeared to matter. Suddenly, people who had smiled next to him as he lied his way into office, and in the three years since, said they were shocked to have discovered that he had lied. Sajid Javid was shocked and resigned. Rishi Sunak was shocked and resigned. Fifty four other government ministers said they were shocked and resigned.

Boris Johnson did not resign, but when it was clear that he couldn’t form a government, he said he would.

And now, two people who served in his cabinet, and claimed to have supported all his policies, now say they want to replace him, and didn’t. By early summer, one of them will be our prime minister. I think we can safely say that it will be Liz Truss.

On the positive front, she surely can’t win the next election. On the negative front – well, Liz Truss.

I have no idea what would persuade someone, in a time of strikes, soaring inflation, record NHS waiting lists, fuel bills that will drive millions into poverty, oh and also war in Europe, pandemic and no-longer deniable climate emergency, to think: I’m just the woman/man to sort it out. You have to worry about their mental health.

In the meantime, to be absolutely honest, I’m more worried about ours.

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Holiday reading

I hope you, too, can take time away from the news and go on holiday with a pile of books. My new book, Outside, the Sky is Blue, has been picked by The Times and The Sunday Times as a Best Summer Read. It’s also currently available at the bargain price of £9.98 on Amazon.

And if you haven’t read my last book, The Art of Not Falling Apart, that’s also, apparently, a good holiday read. You can order a copy here.

Elizabeth Strout’s Oh William!, which I picked as my Book of the Year for The Sunday Times, has been longlisted for the Booker Prize. A wonderful book!

I have a pile of about a million books to read for my (sort of) holiday in August. I’m not going to get through them, of course, but I’ll let you know which ones I loved when I get back.

Sky News

I’ll be on Sky News, with Ali Miraj, on 13th and 27th August. I’m happy to say I’ll be in Umbria.

Coaching

When I get back, I’ll be taking on a few more coaching clients. If you’re interested in finding out more about my coaching, do have a look at my coaching website and get in touch.