Final Word from Monday, May 11, 2015

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In a foreign-policy speech before the U.K. elections, Labour leader Ed Miliband said it was time to end David Cameron's "small-minded isolationism." In March, the U.K.'s ambassador to the CR, Jan Thompson, denied local reports suggesting that her country was losing its influence and withdrawing from the world stage. A few days earlier she had opened as an actress in a Shakespeare play on a Prague stage. Her counterpart in London, Michael Žantovský, found such a lull in bilateral relations that he had time to write a 500-page biography of Václav Havel. Of course it's a good thing for relations between allies to be dull. This could change if Vodafone carries through with its threat to turn to the EU Commission to fight plans by O2 CR and T-Mobile to share their local networks. It says more about the CR's small-minded isolationism than the U.K.'s that such an important issue to Czech consumers might have to be resolved by Brussels. [Czech Republic United Kingdom England PPF]