Rain On Belgium's Parade, But Signs of A Government At the End of the Rainbow?

The clouds hung dark grey and pregnant without breaking for much of Thursday in Brussels. I went out for frites at Maison Antoine on my way to the military parade downtown in the late afternoon. But as a result of a torrential downpour, I was stuck in Mamma Roma, a gourmet pizza by the slice joint, and had to stay content with watching first a manhole cover dance and splash, emitting smoke, and second a succession of Belgian military aircraft fly overhead. Eventually the rain let up a bit and I dragged my flatmates downtown, I couldn't see much other than umbrellas at the parade when I arrived. But then as I started to walk away from the festivities I stumbled right across Albert II, King of the Belgians. And the rain stopped and the streets were filled with people from Place Royale to the Palais de Justice, celebrating their country. So Albert isn't the Last of the Belgians.

National Day came with good news in Belgium's political crisis, government talks will move forward - after a three week vacation, which the king thought the politicians deserved like everyone else, and frankly needed. On the other hand, if things don't work out, French Front National leader Marine Le Pen declared that Wallonia should be allowed to join France as a new region if referendums in France and Wallonia agreed. Lastly, the Economist's Charlemagne column from this week - once again taking inspiration from Magritte in illustrating Belgian politics - was right on the mark, noting that a continued impasse could spook the nervous eurozone sovereign debt markets. Then again, an EUobserver brief today pointed out that the acting government's successful sale of 2.51 billion euros of bonds suggests Belgium is safe from eurozone contagion for now.

Belgium's Unhappy Birthday

Belgium was born in a mild revolution in October 1830, but it celebrates its National Day on July 21, as that was the day nine months later that Leopold I of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (father of the Congo guy) took the oath as first King of the Belgians. So Belgium is basically celebrating its 180th birthday today. There will be a military parade in the center of town, I saw a KFOR truck driving down Rue de la Loi on my walk to work yesterday. It seems likelier than not that the country will not survive to celebrate its 200th.

I have now lived in Belgium for more than six months without the country having a government; it has lacked one for more than 400 days and counting, a world record. The problem is that the leader of a powerful minority is being intransigent and refusing to compromise because it suits his goals to prevent Belgium from functioning - much like the Tea Party-inspired hardline stance of the House GOP in the negotiations to raise the American debt ceiling. However, there is no apocalyptic deadline forcing the parties into forming a government. They already went through their turn in the second half of 2010 in the EU's rotating presidency without a government, and that went fine and was even held up as a model. The country isn't falling apart.

(Although the sidewalks of Brussels are. When I was a reporter in Saratoga Springs, I once did a story on a crack in the sidewalk by the farmer's market that was a lawsuit against the city waiting to happen. True, the US is more litigious than Europe. And there are plenty of streets and sidewalks in the EU which are falling apart. But Brussels is the third richest of the EU's 271 regions. The sidewalks in Flanders aren't like that. So why? Perhaps it's that because of the crisis, Brussels doesn't have a 2011 budget. At least it's easy to come by "Brussels blocks" for your home construction projects.)

Briefly, Belgium is divided into two regions, now mostly autonomous, and the Brussels Capital District. The country is bilingual - speaking Flemish, a dialect of Dutch, and French - but actually the only bilingual city is Brussels itself. French used to be the language of the elite, and the historic Flemish city of Brussels remains Francophone, an island surrounded by the "Flemish ring" of suburbs which separates the city from French-speaking Wallonia - only about 4 km at its narrowest point - but the rest of Flanders speaks Flemish. In nine daytrips to Flanders I have only heard French at the beach (plus at the airport, where, of course, special language laws apply). Due to an economic reversal in recent decades, Flanders produces the vast majority of Belgium's wealth, while the geographically larger but less populated Wallonia lags behind. One of the most heavily industrialized parts of the world in the 19th Century, Wallonia has suffered since its coal and iron mines dried up and became unprofitable. Flanders has a thriving and sometimes separatist nationalist movement; if Walloons have a strong sense of identity, pride, and dialect, they still want to be a part of Belgium. One reason is north to south money transfers through taxation, which the north resents and the south needs - much like Italy or the EU as a whole. [As a case in point, Liege, the largest city in Wallonia and well worth a visit, has one of the most gorgeous train stations in the world, opened in 2009 and pictured.]

The New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), a soft separatist party perhaps comparable to Alex Salmond's Scottish National Party, won the most seats in the election on June 13, 2010 - 27 out of 150. Bart De Wever, its leader, has played hardball in the negotiations to form a government. The Francophone Socialists (PS) won 26 votes, the second most among the nine parties. Their leader Elio Di Rupo was assigned by King Albert II to try to form a government two months ago. In recent news (I get my Belgian news here for the most part), all of the political parties were willing to negotiate based on Di Rupo's proposals except the N-VA, as De Wever rejected them out of hand. The Flemish Christian Democrats (CD&V), the old dominant party which produced the current President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, had been unwilling to continue talks without the N-VA, but the latest news on this National Day is that parties including the CD&V will try to form a government without the N-VA. Exerting political power while officially staying out of government and avoiding responsibility can be politically smart, as irresponsible populists like Pia Kjaersgaard in Denmark and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands have shown in recent years, De Wever may be taking a note from them. But that is why the CD&V has been wary to proceed without the nationalists. Still a country needs a government. Timo Soini's True Finns were supposed to join the government in Finland after their success in this year's election, but ultimately they were not included because they would have prevented bailouts to stricken eurozone countries.

Back to Belgium. Even if a government does form - and one must, sooner or later - to prevent the markets from turning to the high sovereign debt of the eurozone's sixth-shakiest economy, if nothing else - a breakup seems inevitable though not imminent. Brussels has helped hold the country together thusfar, because its fate in any breakup would be complicated. It is technically the Flemish capital, but is now a strongly Francophone city. The price of Flemish independence is that they would lose their Jerusalem. Brussels and Wallonia could form a rump Belgium - perhaps joined by a corridor through the "Flemish ring." Or maybe Brussels could become a city state like Singapore, thus dividing Belgium into three new countries. This isn't great for the city of Brussels or the European Union, as one might imagine. The EU has enough problems functioning with 27 members and there are plenty of countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe that have greater need to join as a new member than Brussels or Wallonia, who have no desire to be independent countries.

The sticky issue in the election last June and neverending government formation has been that the Flemish want to take away the right of French speakers in the Brussels suburbs to vote for French-speaking political parties. They say this is unfair because when the province of Brabant, which contained Brussels, Leuven, and Waterloo, was cut into Flemish Brabant, Walloon Brabant, and the Brussels Capital Region, Flemish speakers in Walloon Brabant lost the right to vote for Flemish-speaking parties. Honestly, I think everyone in Belgium should be able to vote for whatever party he or she wants, but the reason citizens of half of Flemish Brabant have this extra right is that they live around a metropolis, the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of Europe, host of the biggest concentration of EU institutions and the headquarters of NATO. Attempting to preserve the Flemish character of the Brussels suburbs by taking away this unique-in-Belgium right is attempting to prevent Brussels from its natural growth.

Some have called the king the last Belgian. I know others who are Belgians first, not Flemings or Walloons, and I believe many citizens of Brussels feel this way. But the king obviously has something special at stake. While I am generally not a fan of monarchy, Belgium's could help hold the country together. And Albert's message in his speech yesterday on the occasion of National Day made some good points. He warned that the well-being of Belgians could be affected if the crisis is prolonged further, a nod at dangers of the markets. He warned that the political class was leading to citizens' disillusion with possibility of politics providing solutions. And he noted that "our country with its cultural diversity has partly been seen as a model for the European Union." The Belgian crisis could "threaten the momentum of the European structure, already damaged by euroskeptics and populists."

Most of the people of Belgium do not want the country to break apart. There are still strong cultural and historic ties binding Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels, even if 180 years isn't that long a period in this part of the world, where one is constantly reminded of the grandeur of towns like Brussels, Bruges and Ghent in the 1500s. But the birth and death of states is often accomplished by small groups with a clear vision and the rest of us live with the consequences.

Patrick Leigh Fermor

Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, adventurer, war hero and writer, died earlier this month at the ripe old age of 96, while I was in the middle of reading his best-known book. It was the second time in a year that this had happened to me, and curiously enough, I had already been thinking about the mortality of both writers. Tony Judt, one of my favorite commentators on modern Europe, was only 62, but was suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease and writing about it. The much older Leigh Fermor had never gotten around to finishing that best-known work - a supposed three-volume account of a walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople that the 18-year-old Englishman had set out upon in December 1933. Like other readers, I was hoping that the aged writer would finish his great work.

Others have written excellent obituaries and tributes, including people who knew the man personally; I thought the Economist's obit captured a sense of his style. But as a fellow traveler of Europe who just finished A Time of Gifts, the first volume of the 1933-34 walk, and a blogger, I will write a few words.

I discovered Leigh Fermor through the New York Review of Books Classics series, which is an excellent trove of decades-old treasures of literature that deserve to be better remembered. The first book that caught my eye, courtesy of a nice cover, was The Traveller's Tree, actually his first book, on the Caribbean. I recommended it to my father, who was heading there on vacation. A Time of Gifts, given its subject, aroused my interest, and I asked for the NYRB Classics edition for my birthday. It actually reminds me of one of my favorite movies, Fatih Akin's Im Juli, a German romantic comedy where the protagonists roadtrip from Hamburg to Istanbul over the course of a week.

The world Leigh Fermor observed in 1934 and wrote about 40 years later was very different, obviously, from the one the Turkish-German filmmaker displayed in 2000. Hitler had just come to power in Germany and Nazis show up around the corners as young Paddy walks through Cologne, Stuttgart, Heidelberg and Munich. He generally loves Germany and the people he meets there and learns the language, which also helps him further east given its scattered speakers as Magyar and Slovak prove more challenging. Sticking around Greece and mastering the language (he lived there until his death and stayed a bit of an adventurer, a nice profile from The Guardian from a few years ago describes) , he joined the Irish Guards during World War II and kidnapped the German commander General Heinrich Kreipe in Crete in an escapade so daring it was made into a film, starring Dirk Bogarde as Leigh Fermor.

Young Paddy Leigh Fermor was great at making friends - with German girls in Stuttgart, with fellow tramps in Vienna, with innkeepers and old nobles in their castles across the continent. His writing is often beautiful, if occasionally a little show-off. Most of all, he has a keen eye and describes a fascinating vanished world. That for me is what makes the books a real jewel.

A Time of Gifts was published in 1977, and leaves young Paddy in Esztergom, on Hungary's border with Slovakia, not far from Budapest. Between the Woods and the Water followed in 1986 and brings Leigh Fermor further along the Danube to the Iron Gate between Yugoslavia and Romania. Many readers may have despaired at ever finishing the journey as the author came close to the century mark. But I read in one of the articles upon his death that the draft was complete, at least, and Leigh Fermor's editing underway. So perhaps before too long we may see Patrick Leigh Fermor finally reach Byzantium.

I myself have some travel writing to catch up with - I've been to Bulgaria and Sweden in the last month and I set out (via train) for the Hook of Holland myself tomorrow for a weekend exploring the Netherlands with Dutch friends. I still haven't gotten around to writing an essay about the small but beguiling country of Luxembourg, which I visited in February. But maybe I will someday.

The Republican Field

When a SEAL team flew into Abbottabad, Pakistan and put two bullets in Osama bin Laden's skull on May 1, under the orders of President Barack Obama, tectonic plates shifted in American politics. The successful raid gave Obama serious armour on national security. The Republicans can probably only beat him if the economy remains troubled, if gas prices and the unemployment rate are high, if the majority of the voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and if their policies and their candidate seem credible. So, if the Republicans really want to win in 2012, they should let the United States default by not raising the debt ceiling. Or hope that a Greek default or some similar disaster will help them.

Obama is already campaigning against the Republicans' economic policies, which will prove unpopular - there's a reason Medicare is considered a third rail in American politics. But the GOP also lacks a strong candidate. And such candidates as they have will have to make it through a funhouse primary in a Republican Party dominated by the far-right fringe as never before. As we have already seen, the contest will be influenced by politicians and non-politicians with little to no chance of winning the nomination. Donald Trump is just the most notable of these figures so far. Still, it seems clear now that only a serious Republican candidate with an economics focused platform can give Obama a run for his money. And I actually think this is going to lead to the nomination of someone who is a relative moderate in today's GOP.

I've seen no shortage of commentary about the laughable state of the GOP primary field, and Saturday Night Live did a pretty great sketch on it this week after only five candidates, only one of them first tier, participated in the first debate on Fox News. But my aim here is a serious assessment of the candidates and probable/possible candidates, in reverse order of most likely to win the nomination. By now, there are already three drop-outs who'd looked seriously at running and decided not to - Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, South Dakota Senator John Thune, and Indiana Congressman Mike Pence.

Fourth Tier

16. The others who are running or talking about running. Talking about running for president is a good way to get more attention from the press. I really don't think Rudy Giuliani is seriously thinking about running, even in the way that Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin have to be. He has no shot - he was a disaster as a candidate, the initial frontrunner, in 2008. And his party has become more conservative. But Rudy gets more attention now. Like four years ago, George Pataki said at some point he was thinking of running and didn't do anything. Also in this category are John Bolton, George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations and a strong voice for a completely irresponsible and militaristic foreign policy, Roy Moore, the Alabama judge who refused to take a monument to the Ten Commandments out of his courthouse, and Fred Karger, a gay rights activist.

15. Former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer. Roemer gets his own place on the list because he's one of the eight (mostly former) governors in the race. Long forgotten, Roemer was governor from 1988 to 1992. He switched to the Republican Party while in office and came in third, behind David Duke, in his reelection campaign. He's running a real campaign in South Carolina, but gaining no traction. He was turned away from the debate of third-tier candidates because he's a fourth tier candidate.

Third Tier

14. Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. Johnson vetoed much of the legislation he received while serving as governor from 1995 through 2002. Nationally, he's best known for his support of legalizing marijuana. He has a solid libertarian record, in some ways a better one than Ron Paul. And the Tea Party is a largely libertarian movement. But Johnson's candidacy worked better on paper than it has so far in practice. Paul managed to gain himself quite a following in 2008, and they are among the most loyal fans in politics; since Paul is running, Johnson's potential has been squished. The Tea Party isn't just a libertarian movement and the Republican Party is not just the Tea Party, it is also the party of social conservatives, big business, and a swaggering foreign policy. Neither Johnson nor Paul can win the nomination.

13. Donald Trump. The high point of Trump's flirtation with running for president was when he spurred President Obama into revealing his long form birth certificate. The whole sordid birther movement was a national embarrassment and by latching himself to it Trump became more of one. But Trump got his comeuppance at the White House Press Correspondent's Dinner and when Obama got Osama, he was done. The flirtation will end without a run, and soon.

12. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Defeated in his reelection bid in 2006, Santorum looks like a has been. But he can argue that 2006 was a bad year for Republicans and he is from a moderate state. Fellow 2006 loser George Allen is mounting a comeback bid in Virginia. Santorum is a social conservative through and through. He believes abortion is a holocaust and homosexuality an abomination. In this, he really symbolizes what is anti-modern and worst about the Republican Party. There was a reason we leftists laughed at his daughter's tears when he lost. Does Santorum really believe he can win the nomination? I'm not sure. He can compete in Iowa and South Carolina, where evangelicals hold sway. But Bachmann is a fresher face. A victory for him in either state would be a shock. Seven months before the primaries, this candidacy looks stillborn.

11. Herman Cain. Cain is a talk show host and former CEO of a pizza chain. He must be an appealing speaker for the right, otherwise he would be grouped with Bolton, Karger, and Moore in the no-shot category. He provides the red meat conservatives like, for example his pledge not to include Muslims in his administrations. But he's a long-shot despite being an energizing new face. Cain is good for the Republican Party. In 2008, while Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson competed for the Democratic nomination, the Republicans had a field of only white men. Cain and Bachmann assure that the GOP field in 2012 will better reflect America - at a time when an ugly strain of the Tea Party exemplified by the birther issue leaves the party vulnerable to charges of racism. But the United States draws its presidents from the ranks of vice presidents, governors, senators, congressmen, and generals. Not talk show hosts and CEOs.

Second Tier

10. Texas Congressman Ron Paul. See what I wrote about Gary Johnson. Ron Paul had hundreds of thousands of devoted supporters. He could come in second in New Hampshire or Nevada and he will finish respectably in this race, possibly as high as third place. But he's not going to be the nominee. He's too much a classical Jeffersonian and not Republican enough.

9. A "savior," and no, I don't mean Jesus or Ronald Reagan. Republican voters and elites are not happy with the options they have, sparking movements to draft supposedly better candidates into the race. New Jersey Chris Christie is a serious blunt-spoken fiscal conservative fighter but he has repeatedly said that he will not run, that he is not ready yet after barely more than a year in office. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, the architect of the Republican's deficit and debt reduction plan that would fundamentally change Medicare, is young, brainy, seen as charismatic and attractive, and he would probably be the best person to respond to Barack Obama's criticisms of the Paul Ryan budget plan, which will be a big part of his reelection effort. But it doesn't look like either are going to jump in. Also sometimes mentioned as savior candidates but even less likely - former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and new Florida Senator (and more likely someone's running mate) Marco Rubio.

8. Former Speaker of the House and Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich. Do you remember Newt from the 90s? He triumphed in the 1994 elections, but then he went toe to toe with Bill Clinton and lost repeatedly. Doonesbury perceptively drew him as a bomb with a lit fuse. He's the intellectual in a party with a strengthened anti-intellectual streak. He has a tendency to go too far in his rhetoric. He's never run for statewide office, much less national. As he finally genuinely begins to run for president after years of talking about it, he does not look like a serious candidate to me. Who wants yesterday's papers? Retreads from 2008 are bad enough, Gingrich is a retread from 1994-1998. If Romney and Pawlenty and Daniels and Huntsman aren't conservative enough, Bachmann and Palin and Huckabee and Santorum and Cain can all outflank him on the right. If the seven people listed above him on my list all run, I'd be surprised to see him earn a third-place finish anywhere.

7. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Six months ago I thought Palin was going to be the nominee. But now I doubt she will run, and I don't think she sees an opening herself. Her support has shrunk within her own party while her negatives remain sky high among the general public and if she ran she might only come in fourth or so. The attempted assassination of Gabby Giffords and Palin's response to criticism after the shooting of her aggressive rhetoric and tone, which she called "blood libel," was a key moment. Palin looks like she's done. But we'll see. Frankly, she's a more skilled and natural politician than anyone else here except maybe Mike Huckabee. She has gone abroad and made policy speeches. And she did perform better in the debate against Joe Biden than she did in the interview with Katie Couric. If there's anything we've learned about Sarah Palin since August 2008, it is that she is full of surprises.

6. Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann. Palin has almost been replaced by Bachmann. A few years older, a bit smarter, and a bit crazier than Palin, when she saw her friend holding back on running, Bachmann dived into seriously considering running for president, to the surprise of many. Members of Congress do not have a good track record of getting elected to the highest office in the land. But Bachmann was the strongest voice of the Tea Party in the last Congress, and she has challenged the GOP leadership, giving her own "Tea Party" response to Obama's last State of the Union, for instance. She has a real shot at winning Iowa and becoming the candidate of the hard conservatives. If neither Palin or Huckabee run and her closest competitors for that role are Gingrich and Santorum, I think that translates as at least a 15% shot at the nomination. It also helps Romney.

First Tier

5. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee finished in an effective tie for second place with Mitt Romney in 2008. He's fairly likeable (especially compared with Romney) and polls better than pretty much anyone against Obama. But he is reluctant to run. Running for president, and possibly becoming president, would not make Huckabee's life more enjoyable. As a well-paid conservative commentator, he has financial security for the first time in his life. Huckabee still appears to be about 50/50 on running and if I had to pick, I'd say he will run. But he's already hurt his candidacy by sitting on the fence this long.

4. Former Utah Governor and Former Ambassador to China and Singapore Jon Huntsman. Huntsman is definitely about to step into the race and he is the strongest candidate the Republicans have. Which is one reason Obama sent him to China, which would make him a stronger candidate in 2016, although not, Obama expected, in 2012. Huntsman was an effective governor and he has serious foreign policy experience focused on probably the most important region of the 21st century. His Mormonism seems less of a liability than Romney's, perhaps because it is less emphasized. His weakness is that Democrats like him more than Republicans. Is that disqualifying? It seems slightly less so after May 1, to the extent that I rate his chances of the nomination this high. Huntsman can make the case that he can best handle the challenge of China, which is a big part of the economic anxiety out there in America. But he steps into a crowded field to face Republican voters outraged by the fact that he worked for Obama. Winning the nomination will be harder than winning the general election for him, so we'll see just how politically talented he is. The other bit of conventional wisdom on Huntsman is that 2012 might be a dry run for 2016.

3. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. The only current governor in the race - or almost in the race. Daniels comes off as a serious policy guy focused like a laser beam on fiscal issues, and the race basically lacks that - and he's considered less of a RINO (Republican In Name Only) than Huntsman, although his comment that we should call a truce on social issues to focus on dealing with our debt and deficit crisis provoked outrage from people like Rick Santorum. Daniels has been a reluctant candidate, but could be that "savior" - and many Democrats would prefer their opponent to be an adult who they respect instead of Donald Trump or Sarah Palin. One reason for the reluctance is personal - Daniels' wife left him and their children for a few years in the 1990s, married another man, and then came back to him, and she is hardly eager for her marriage to be the focus of national attention. There is no campaign in waiting. But like Huntsman, Daniels would be a formidable opponent for Obama if he decides in the next few weeks to run and can convince primary voters to nominate him.

2. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. "Generic Republican" has polled better against Obama than the actual candidates. Pawlenty is trying his hardest to be that generic Republican, the least objectionable guy in the race. Mostly this means being the anti-Romney. He's more likable, didn't come from a privileged background, not Mormon, also governed a blue state but didn't do anything as objectionable as pass universal health care, does not hesitate from apologizing for past "mistakes" like supporting cap-and-trade climate change legislation as he moves to the right to win the primary. He's a new face - a former officeholder, but less former than Palin, Huckabee, Romney and others, having just ended his term. He's not super impressive (most just say boring), but his overdramatic action hero campaign ads are mildly amusing. In a weak field and a bad economy, he could conceivably become president. If it's Pawlenty vs. Romney vs. social conservatives in the primary, he's got a decent shot at Iowa, which he needs to win the nomination.

1. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. You know the story about Mitt Romney. He's the frontrunner with an asterisk. He's the easiest of the bunch to picture as president but he's got some clear problems with primary voters. First, he passed universal health care in Massachusetts, and inspired the final shape of Obamacare. Second, he's Mormon, and evangelical Christians don't trust him for that reason, it will also hurt him in the general election. Third, nobody particularly likes him. It's a big reason that he didn't win the 2008 primary and a big reason that John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. Still, Mitt has the best shot of anyone. He's learned from his previous candidacy, we think. He's "next in line." And he has a clear path to the nomination. Don't let Pawlenty or Huckabee or Daniels win Iowa. Win big in New Hampshire and Nevada. Do well in Florida. If all this happens, Romney will be the presumptive nominee by some point in February.

I hope and expect President Obama will still be occupying the Oval Office by the end of January 2013. I think his chances are upwards of 70% at this point. But if the economy and the American people are still depressed, we could have a President Romney, a President Pawlenty, a President Daniels, a President Huntsman or a President Huckabee. It could be worse. Out of those five, only one truly terrifies me - Huckabee - on the grounds of his religious zeal and foreign policy cluelessness, which would be particular disastrous in a fast-changing Middle East. And for the destruction of the presidential prospects of the true demagogues and crazies, America's internal enemies, we can thank Obama's gut and the skill of the SEALs.

Apparently the Royals Are Tories

The royal family invited to the wedding members of the unemployed royal families of Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia (sic), various absolute monarchs (ie. dictators) from around the world (although the crown prince of Bahrain at least had the shame to decline to attend, not wanting to bring negative attention to the ceremony), representatives from Zimbabwe, North Korea and Yemen (although they did disinvite Syria and Malawi), former prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, both of the Conservative party, and Guy Ritchie, David Beckham, and Elton John, but not the previous two prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown or the UK's commissioner at the European Union, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Baroness Catherine Ashton, all of the Labour Party?

Ed Miliband at least did get an invite. I would suggest that after he enjoys some wedding cake, he should add to the Labour platform the abolition of the monarchy.

Let England Shake

"The West's asleep / Let England shake! / Weighted down with silent dead / I fear our blood won't rise again / England's dancing days are done..."

So Polly Jean Harvey sang a year ago on the Andrew Marr Show, accompanied by a strange stringed instrument and a looped sample of "Istanbul, Not Constantinople," her boa and hairdress suggesting a raven (leaving the tower?) while fellow guest Prime Minister Gordon Brown looked on. At the time Nick Clegg was "soaring" in the polls, Brown was calling voters "bigoted," and people weren't so sure about David Cameron and his friends. But soon the election results were in, Brown was out, and Britain had its first coalition government since the Second World War and its first government involving the Liberals since the Great War. Then came austerity.

Harvey's excellent new album Let England Shake was released a few months ago, and it's my favorite of the young decade (though the Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem albums from last year give it a run for its money). Written on an autoharp, it has a more ethereal sound than her punkish early work, it is catchy, accessible, poetic and interesting. The songs are about her native England and about war. Several songs refer to the failure at Gallipoli in 1916, others more generally to the trenches and battles of the Great War. "Written On the Forehead" is about Iraq. Harvey commissioned photographer Seamus Murphy to make short films in England for each song. Harvey explained the reading and research into conflict that preceded the recording of the album ("I was wanting to show the way that history repeats itself, and so in some ways it doesn't matter what time it was, because the endless cycle goes on and on and on... I started wondering where the officially appointed war songwriter was. You have got your war artists, like Steve McQueen, and your war photographers. I fantasized that I had been appointed this official songwriter and so I almost took on that challenge for myself,") and the Imperial War Museum offered to make her an official war song correspondent.

"Goddamn Europeans, take me back to beautiful England, and the grey, damp filthiness of ages and battered books and fog rolling down behind the mountains on the graveyards and dead sea-captains..."

Following Polly's advice, I returned to London, the center of the world, earlier this month after an eight year absence. When I studied there in college, Tony Blair took the United Kingdom into George W. Bush's Iraq War. I watched Bush, Blair, Jose Manuel Barroso and Jose Maria Aznar give Saddam Hussein their demands from the Azores. I marched through Hyde Park in the biggest war protest in decades. I was in Amsterdam on a field trip when the bombs started falling and I had never been more ashamed of my country. In April 2011, Tony Blair is long gone, his candidacy for President of the European Council laughed off the stage (though Barroso rules the Commission blocks away from where I live in Brussels). London had just seen the biggest protests since eight years ago, however, against the coalition government's austerity measures, breaking into small riots. Trafalgar Square had been cleaned up nicely, though. I arrived during a spell of lovely warm weather and there wasn't much of a hint that anything was wrong in England. Indeed, the tea towels had been printed for the April 29 royal wedding.

I enjoyed the Imperial War Museum, which is really worth an afternoon next time you're in London. But Harvey's album is timely, the present moment reminds you that Britain's glory is past, even as cosmopolitan London still feels like the center of the world. The United Kingdom is slowly but surely drifting apart into its constituent nations. Cameron, along with Nicolas Sarkozy, led Barack Obama into a "kinetic military action" in Libya, but within a few days Britain had used up a huge chunk of its missile stockpile. The government had to reconsider its defense budget cuts. The Arab Spring generally represents a crack-up of the mostly British-imposed post-Great War, post-Ottoman order of the Middle East (the shaping of which is excellently described in David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace, which I just read). Eight Arab royals, mostly from countries with long and close relationships to London, are attending William and Kate's wedding but the crown prince of Bahrain is staying away to avoid protests as the future of the house of Khalifa is threatened by protests. A relatively modern Gulf state - the first to diversify its economy away from energy - has fallen under martial law because killing its people is the only way for its 18th century monarchy to stay in power.

The Economist's Bagehot columnist last week took the occasion of the royal wedding to suggest a republic to prevent further class-based nastiness in England. Timothy Garton Ash admits that the monarchy doesn't work in democratic theory but has a heritage value, he asks if we'd prefer a President Blair in Buckingham Palace and points out rightly that "Rupert Murdoch is a far greater threat to British democracy than our hereditary head of state." There are probably decades to go before these bright young things take the throne as King William V and Queen Catherine. The forecast in London tomorrow is cloudy with a chance of rain.

A Green Governor in Germany

I was going to write at length about the political earthquake in Germany yesterday - partly spawned by Germany's freakout about nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster caused by a real earthquake halfway around the world - but The Economist covers everything pretty well in this blog post. The Green Party has captured the minister presidentship (the German version of the governorship) of Baden-Wuerrtemberg, a wealthy, large state in Germany's southwest - population 10.7 million, larger than many European countries. They came in second place among the parties, but the two center-left parties combined did better than the two center-right parties. This weakens Angela Merkel's government as the opposition gains more power in the upper legislative chamber in Berlin, composed of representatives of the 16 Laender, or states. So just a couple things to add.

Although much of the commentary does not note this, the Green Party was actually leading in the polls months ago, before Fukushima, before Germany decided to sit out when France, Britain and the United States decided to prevent a massacre in Libya. The nuclear disaster - and Merkel's blatantly election-minded reversal of the nuclear extension, which had been the biggest success of her second term - helped put them over the top - weakening the Christian Democratic Union's case in its heartland which it has governed for 58 years, and giving to the edge to the Greens rather than their natural coalition partners the Social Democrats (SPD). But the SPD, even more so than the CDU, has been in decline from its old position as a Volkspartei (one of the two major parties). The Green Party platform resonates in Germany, and it has been pragmatic but principled enough that its environmental, energy, economic and foreign policies appeal to a growing section of the German electorate. The SPD is more economically populist - challenged from its left flank by the post-communist Left Party - as well as particularly pro-Russian - Gerhard Schroeder got on famously with Vladimir Putin, although his Green foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, did not. Once the party of protest, the Greens have become the most centrist of Germany's five major parties - and it is an admirable, forward-looking centrism. They also have a more pro-European outlook than the Christian-liberal coalition governing in Berlin. So congratulations to the Greens. And there is a very good chance that they soon could be leading the government in Berlin as well - although the position of Buergermeister, not Kanzler.