The privatization is the big worry. It destroyed Britain's railways and other facilities and was basically a cop out by the government.

I really don't buy into this idea that the railways were destroyed - at least not by privatisation.
I'm not old enough to really remember what British Rail was like in the 1970s but I do remember what it was like in the early 1980s and there's no way that I would want to go back to that level of service.
Privatisation was not a cop out by the Government; it was the recognition that government had no business holding these kind of assets. Governments might not always do a great job of running the country but they almost always do a bad job of running industry.
Do you think people would be on broadband now if the GPO was still running the telecoms sector and customers had to wait weeks for a telephone line to be installed?
British Airways would have gone the same way as Sabena if it hadn't been given the freedom to compete in the open market and to adjust to new market conditions.
Household gas and electricity prices might be high now, but they are substantially cheaper in real terms than when the providers were state-owned monopolies.
Even the water companies are providing a better service, with far greater investment going into modernising the water network than was ever possible when they were run by the water boards.
Don't knock privatisation because it provides profits for shareholders - knock nationalisation because it provides an equally poor service for all customers.

J. Norberg comments (and books) are interesting to read. (Despite the fact that he is Swedish and I am a Norwegian!). But his comment on the election in Sweden is not one of his best. The new government in Sweden will not change the Nordic model. What has happend is that Moderatarna (The Conservatives) in Sweden has accepted the Swedish (social-democratic model). They do not - at least officially - go for large tax cuts and heay reductions in social benefits. Moderatarna in Sweden has traditionally been futher to the right than their sister party in Norway (and Denmark to some extent). Now they have become more Norwegian like, they have moved to the centre, they have accepted the fact that even many of their own voters in one way or another are dependent on the welfare state. There is no way you can win an election in Sweden (or Norway) by a Thatcher-like program.
In Denmark they have a government not far from the new one in Sweden. The Danish Prime minister V. Rasmussen (he belongs to the liberal party Venstre) in a recent interview with the Danish newspaper "Weekendavisen" statet that the Welfare state did not reduce the fredom of the individual, on the contrary, it secured the well being and therefore the freedom of the many. He sounds just like the Norwegian social democratic party prime minister Jens Stoltenberg. The fact of the matter is that the social democratic model has been accepted by most large parties in Scandinavia. There will of course be changes in Sweden, but we are in no way talking about regime change of any sort. In my own country Norway we have a centre left government. They took over form a centre right one a year ago. Changes are not profound. The minister of finance, Kristin Halvorsen who comes from the most radical party in the government - SV (about the same as Vänstern in Sweden) - sounds more and more like the last one from the conservative party - Per Kristian Foss.
But, there may be an important change in the longer run. The social democrats have been in power "for ages". They have filled a number of institutions with their own party members. This system is pretty corrupt, but, of course we do not talk about it in this way up here. We are too clean - we think. That is pure b...shit. From that point of view a change in government is very welcome.

I share Norberg's cautious optimism, but also agree partly with Einar's comment from Norway. There is indeed a strong social democratic consensus in Scandinavia, and while the Swedish model may not yet have failed, it is under such strain that it threatens to break if not radically reformed. The challenge for any government in Scandinavia is to deal with the structural problems while retaining the values and way of life that the region is known and respected for, and which the majority of citizens wish to retain.

We talk here of the welfare system not being able to cope with changing demographics, and that is true also of Scandinavia, only it's particularly bad in Sweden as the public-private balance is skewed so far toward the state, and it's relatively difficult there for smaller-scale and imaginative economic initiatives to take root. Norway is somewhat different, as with all the natural resource wealth, the Norwegians can afford to be complacent for a while longer.

The Danes and Swedes are looking for a way out that doesn't result in selfish individualism and the collapse of community, and good luck to them. But, having lived in Denmark, and been witness first hand to the debate about the liberal-conservative government's changes to immigration and integration policies, I feel somewhat uncomfortable with some of the things they are doing, as they are fuelling racism within the country. As for my own political bias, I am a left-libertarian, and in Denmark voted for "Radikalerne", which tends to side with the left, albeit from a more liberal perspective.

For a British perspective on the situation in Sweden, I quite liked what Andrew Brown had to say over at Comment is Free. I also had published a CiF piece, but this was more a laying out of basic facts about the Swedish economy.