From the outside, Norway can look like a haven of affluence, a country whose population of just 5.5 million is propped up by a gargantuan sovereign wealth fund worth nearly $2 trillion. Yet the country’s vast riches do not mean that it runs a low-tax economy. 

Far from it. Instead, its Leftist government has presided over a coalition that has promoted high-cost EU energy rules and alienated its entrepreneurs with punitive wealth taxes.

Back in Britain, as they court ire over net-zero targets and oversee an exodus of 11,000 millionaires from the UK (equivalent to losing half a million average taxpayers), Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband might take note. 

For this week Norway became a cautionary tale of what can happen to a Left-wing government that blindly pursues green energy policies and alienates its wealth generators, with its government collapsing after weeks of vicious infighting. 

“This is not an outcome I wished for,” said Jonas Gahr Støre, the country’s prime minister, whose Labour party must now govern on its own for the first time in 25 years after his centrist coalition partners decided they could not abide by proposed EU energy rules.