I think in the world where the man with the golden tie is doing well we may need to reposition ourselves on some hot button issues. On gays and Europe there has been a residual fear that if we point out too much that the Tories are homophobes and xenophobes we will deliver unto ourselves the liberals and the homos and the people who have three kinds of olive oil, but these may actually be outweighed in this great country of ours by the queer-bashers and closet racists – so our moral stand could leave us marginally worse off. That’s not the kind of moral stand I like. Let’s all stamp on a paedo. That’s my kind of brave crusade.

I’ve looked at the numbers and the maths are difficult to calculate even using Mosaic, but if we look at proxy questions like “Are you relaxed about the introduction of new varieties of breakfast cereal?” (87% of homophobes aren’t) or “Would you agree with the statement that in general the Cox’s Orange Pippin is superior to the avocado pear?” (79% of racists hold this view) compared with the numbers who agree 3-D films are primarily an innovation to drive up cinema revenue (83% liberal), then it does seem that this nation is actually basically decent, so far as we can tell. But only marginally.