EVERY TUESDAY evening when Germany’s Bundestag is in session, a gaggle of cross-party mps discard their suits, clamber into a team bus and decamp to a football pitch in east Berlin where they take on amateur all-comers. Founded in 1961, and open to current and former male and female mps, fc Bundestag’s roster has included such luminaries as Joschka Fischer and the late Wolfgang Schäuble. It presents itself as a place where political rivals can set aside their differences in the interests of beating their opponents on the pitch, raising money for good causes in the process. Its website proudly declares the team “Ambassadors of Parliament”.