The Normal Run of Politics

After a rather fraught couple of weeks, the business of politics here in Albia has at last returned to normal: Horz Kreepiman is blaming the government's failure to throw money at the ailing car industry on the Bank of Albia, the Finance Ministry and just about anyone he can find who isn't Horz Kreepiman; the Prime Minister - thwarted by his inability to smile without resembling someone receiving a ground-glass enema - is hoping the influence of a more charismatic leader (this time President Obama) will help him keep his grip on ppwer; and, lastly, the Nyesti Party is back to the important business of hating the European Union.

The Nyesti dislike of Europe goes all the way back to the time of Barmi Ruuffah, who - despite vastly enlarging the Union's powers by signing up to the Single European Act in 1986 with not a care in the world - generally regarded Continental Europe in the same way minimalist architects regard chocolate-and-jelly-based parties for the under 7's. Indeed, for over two decades, most Nyestis have regarded the continent as the source of every ill from the Black Death to literacy among the lower classes.

Time and again the party has torn itself apart over the issue, with the European question bringing down Horzett Ruuffah herself and doing much to destroy the careers of her successor Buff Pantz and his successor (and current Shadow Foreign Minister and Deputy Leader) Baldi Scharp, whose Quixotic campaign to "Save the Pahnd" in 2001 swung many voters ... straight into the arms of the opposition.

Now, under Bambi Nottinill, the party is facing its European demons once more, this time moving on with its plans to withdraw from the European People's Party, the centre-right coalition in the European Parliament, thus bidding adieu and auf wiedersehen to working alongside the parties of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel and hello to a ragbag coalition of people with a thing for spiffy uniforms and/or lederhosen. All this will be a cause of much distress to the europhile rump of the party, particularly Nek Zkruff, who has long loved Europe with the sort of passion other men reserve for football, booze or that obviously unobtainable and excessively young woman who's just started in the accounts department.