The junta of experts tells us: ‘Vote how you like, but policies cannot change'

Europe seems to have slipped almost imperceptibly in the space of only a few months into an electoral interzone, a crack in the pavement of democracy.

The formal trappings of clean elections - in which political parties with competing manifestoes contest a ballot free of voter intimidation - are all still there, but someone else has decided in advance what the result will be.

It's not the voters that are intimidated any more: it's the parties that are.

The count of EU membe...