Simonpj noticed that the Python 3.2 interpreter on his Ubuntu 12.04 installation doesn't support Unicode literal syntax (e.g. u'hello'). Indeed it seems this syntax was dropped in Python 3 and later re-introduced in Python 3.3 (https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0414/).

At this point we have a decision to make: Either drop the uses of Unicode literals in the driver (and, consequently, support for Python 2) or keep things as they are and demand Python >3.3.