If all this sounds like Europe as a giant Rhineland economy, that is no accident.Mr Verhofstadt, a continental liberal, means something different by "Europe".
They were liberals in the continental mould, not in the British one.
Its current coalition partners Dutch voting habits and rules almost guarantee coalitions are D66, a vaguely progressive party, and VVD, liberals in the continental sense meaning originally anti-clerical, and these days on the free-market right.
The irony is that, obscure titles and rituals notwithstanding, in many ways Britain in 2012 looks more open, liberal and diverse than continental Europe.
Under the Liberal Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, continental European immigrants settled the prairies, and Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces in 1905.
Their equivalents in Prince Metternich's day were the nationalist and liberal movements that troubled the continental monarchies, and erupted in the revolutions of 1848 forcing Metternich to resign and flee into exile in Britain.
Free Wi-Fi, continental breakfast included.
Even then, it was only after the Second World War that the principles of modern liberal democracy became fully rooted in continental Europe.
Mr Bayrou's true political family is neither liberal nor of the left but continental Christian democracy, with its patrician traditions.His Union for French Democracy holds only 27 seats out of 577 in the National Assembly.
In sharp contrast to stronger state roles in the Nordic countries or in most continental European countries, the liberal welfare regimes rely on the marketplace for childcare high use of informal care, reliance on parent fees with subsidies for those who qualify, and private, often for-profit service provision.
