London

At times—blessedly—politics barely intrude on normal life. Last year, for example, Britain held an election that bored virtually everyone who wasn’t directly involved in it. It was no more consequential than most elections (in other words, it mattered, but not as much as everyone believed), but it had the merit of producing an entirely reasonable outcome that almost no one (myself included) expected: A bored nation voted narrowly for a boring party, the Conservatives, and was placidly surprised by the outcome.