Europe delighted by new Greek government

European leaders reacted positively last night to the news  that Greece had abandoned plans for a referendum and had instead appointed a government of national unity headed by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.

One EU official said, ‘Thank goodness they have seen sense and given up on the referendum idea. It would have come to a pretty pass if a government had been reduced to asking its people for their opinion on their future.’

Said another top Eurocrat, ‘Greece is meant to be the cradle of democracy. What on earth did it think it was doing being democratic?

‘This is typical of the Greeks – they have a long and unfortunate history of this sort of behaviour dating right back to the 5th Century BC.’

‘Model democracies like Britain,’ said the head of unelected European Commission, Mr Van Rumpy-Pumpy, ‘do not waste time with tiresome referenda which undermine the entire democratic fabric of er…’

He continued, ‘If Greece had got its way, this terrible democratic idea could have spread throughout the Eurozone and the notion of public involvement in important decisions could have bought civilisation as we know it to an end.’

All European experts were agreed that Greece would do much better to do what they were told by the EU.

(From UK satirical magazine, Private Eye)