Well right now the barometer is running about 85 percent glad of our Westminster-style democracy, 10 percent secondhand embarrassment and alarm about the state of the US, and then of course there’s the omnipresent 5 percent who think that everything the US has done l and is currently doing should be slavishly copied here.

That last 5 percent can generally defined as the opinions of the proportion of the population that, kindly speaking, have a few kangaroos loose in the ol’ top paddock.