SPD wins Berlin vote as Pirates celebrate
The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) won Berlin?s state election on Sunday, setting up a likely coalition with the Greens. The upstart Pirate Party sailed easily into parliament.
This could hardly have ended better: the F.D.P. (the national embarrassment I mentioned earlier) is out of another state parliament, the "Left Party" (a mix of champagne socialists, malcontents, lunatics and GDR-era communists) lost a substantial number of votes, the ruling centre-left SPD may yet be forced into a so-called Grand Coalition with the centre-right CDU and the "Pirate Party" has sailed into parliament for the first time ever.