Mary’s gone, Tony’s leaving (eventually), and now G�ran might have to sling his hook. G�ran Persson, prime minister of Sweden for the past decade, is facing the possibility of being forced out of office if he loses next Sunday’s closely contested election. Persson is also leader of the Social Democratic party, which has, the Economist reports, “ruled Sweden alone or with other parties for 65 of the past 74 years.” One of the reasons that the government faces a possible defeat is that, aside from sheer boredom among the electorate with a party in power for the past 12 years, the right-leaning opposition has successfully raised questions about how successful the economy really is.

Another liability is apparently Persson himself. Unlike our own rigorously inoffensive prime minister, Persson seems–according to this report from the FT–to be a bit of a jerk. Apparently, during the 1970s, the bulky politician pioneered a “tactic that became known as “jabbing.”” Sounds unpleasant. And recently he upset Sweden’s egalitarian applecart with his ostentation:

That sentence alone seems to encapsulate the gap between what those overly scrupulous Nordic types and us more … relaxed Micks expect from our public figures. A top Irish politician living in a �1.4m house would feel that they had missed a few tricks during their clamber up the greasy pole. Then again, the ethos of Lagom (roughly meaning “in moderation”), which is putatively an overriding force in Swedish society, is not exactly mirrored in Irish culture as a whole.