In the run-up to the UK election, investors gave voters a run for their money in flaunting their apathy. Labour has won its expected third term. But as Winston Churchill pointed out, the English never draw a line without blurring it.

Labour faced an unreconstructed Tory party and the Liberal Democrats, whose economic platform appeared forward-looking only by the standards of Sweden circa 1979. Yet Tony Blair's majority owes more to the quirks of the British electoral system than to a convincing popular mandate.