In their version, parental ballots could be held and local-government officials would have to sack head teachers or hand schools over to be run by more successful ones, if that was what parents said they wanted.

ECONOMIST: Transforming Britain's schools

But critics of eurozone austerity programmes can't help seeing a rich irony in German politicians fretting about accidental tax rises and spending cuts in the US. Aren't they the ones who've been insisting that large parts of the eurozone head over their own fiscal cliff, entirely on purpose?

BBC: Why is America's fiscal cliff more worrying than Europe's?