Great Britain has been transfixed by an election last Thursday that resulted in no clear winner.
For days the horse-trading raged while exhausted TV pundits camped out at Westminister, getting into fights with politicians and insulting activists.
In the end Gordon Brown, panned as he was by the British media, handled himself with great dignity in the way he bowed out, although there was still a funny side.
And so here it is, a coalition government in the UK. Although the norm across Europe
, those self-same exhausted pundits can tell you (and often did) that this is the first hung parliament since 1974, the first coalition since Churchill formed one in World War II, and the first peacetime coalition for almost a hundred years.
Not only that, but it is the one that would have been least expected a year ago, namely one between the right wing Conservatives, or Tories, and the center left Liberal Democrats. The two parties leaders have called it a 'new kind of politics' and a historic and seismic moment.
David Cameron, the Tory leader, has been installed as Prime Minister
, and the Lib's Nick Clegg is the Deputy Prime Minister. Appearing relaxed together - and as two former public [i.e. private] school boys of the same age, why shouldn't they be - they described this as a formal five year coalition that would be stable.
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