I think I am alone (or nearly alone) in seeing Mr Obama as Tony Blair mark 2. Remember him? He of the ear-to-ear grin, sound bites and charisma?

To this day there is a mystery concerning Blair's 'vision': was it socialism, 'third-way capitalism', liberalism or good old-fashioned colonial adventurism? We simply don't know.

What we do know is that after ten years of his reign, the Britain we once knew and loved has been reduced to a train-wreck of special interest groups, many of them foreign in origin, fighting for a share of the dead corpse.

I fear (and I hope I am wrong about this) that Barak Obama will similarly turn out to be a false prophet. I worry that, like a skillful bull-fighter, he will plunge a sword when least expected into the exposed neck of the USA.

Our experience in Britain teaches that such messiahs need less than ten years to 'destroy the forces of Conservatism'. I would caution Americans to keep a copy of the Bill of Rights close to hand. They may just find they need it when considering the avalanche of new legislation that is about to hit them, taking away freedoms they now take for granted.