SPARE a thought this weekend for Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg. He spent almost 10 years as Norway’s prime minister slashing and privatising his country’s once prized welfare state.

On his watch, Norway’s military spending rose to become one of the highest per head in the whole of Nato, although he failed in his wish to take Norway into the EU.

This was all a far cry from his earlier years in the self-styled Marxist-Leninist Red Youth group, before finding a new home on the right wing of the Norwegian Labour Party.