Standing to win only 22% of the vote in Thursday’s European elections, support for Gordon Brown’s Labour seems to be haemorrhaging. Traditional allies The Observer and The Guardian are now putting their considerable weight behind Britain’s third largest party, the Liberal Democrats. While the Observer in its Sunday editorial anoints it “the party with the most sensible EU agenda”, commentator Ilana Bet-El in its sister paper argues that Nick Clegg’s party “has worked best for the benefit of British citizens in Europe”. A centre-left movement, the Lib Dems consistently win 20% of the national vote, yet in political influence remain a victim of Britain’s first past the post voting system, holding 62 seats out of a total of 646 at Westminster.
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.