Pre-election Britain: a new riddle for Europe

FROM the European perspective, one is tempted to describe present-day Britain with Winston Churchill's famous words about the old Soviet Union - "a riddle inside an enigma wrapped in a mystery". Everything appears up in the air, making predictions of the election outcome on May 7 a hazardous game.

Continental Europe, by and large a traditional anglophile redoubt, is having its doubts about Great Britain as we used to know it. The party landscape is fragmenting. …