In Berlin last weekend, people kept asking me about the British election and I kept asking them the German for "hung parliament". None of them could help me. The German for "hung parliament" is simply "parliament", because the system of proportional representation the Federal Republic adopted in 1949 routinely produces parliaments with no overall majority. At a quick count, the Federal Republic has had less than two years of single-party or tolerated minority government out of the last 60. All the rest of the time it has had coalition governments. Yet somehow Germany today does not seem to resemble the ghastly chaos with which the Daily Mail and the Sun are now trying to scare their readers.
An example quite beyond parody appeared in yesterday's Sun. Its Page 3 girl – "Becky, 26, from London" – was reported in an inset text ("News in Briefs") as follows: "Becky is concerned by the prospect of electoral reform in a hung parliament. She said: 'In legislatures with proportional representation, minority or coalition government is often the norm. I'd hate to live in a country like Italy that has had 61 governments in 65 years – even if I do love Italian food.'" This gem of the Sun reporter's art followed a front page proclaiming "Well Hung.. and Shafted" (also hard to translate into German.) "Fears of coalition Govt rock Britain", read the headline on the lead story by the paper's political editor, which noted warnings by "Tories and top businessmen" that "a coalition would plunge the country into chaos".
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