WHICH European country faces the greatest risk of political instability and financial turmoil in the year ahead? With the UK’s general election just a day away, the answer is both obvious and surprising. Once a haven of stability amid the turmoil of the euro crisis, the UK is about to become the most politically unpredictable member of the European Union (EU).Indeed, continuity is the one election outcome that can almost certainly be excluded. Unless opinion polls are unusually inaccurate, the two parties comprising the government coalition, Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, have almost no chance of winning a combined parliamentary majority.One possibility — with a probability slightly above 50% according to the polls — is that the UK will soon have a Labour-led government committed to the biggest tax-raising programme since the 1970s. Moreover, because of the peculiarities of the UK’s electoral system and the rise of Scottish and Welsh national...
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