To listen to the excitable coverage, you might think that we were in the midst of a jolly stimulating election season in three separate countries. France, the US and London (a country within a country) would all seem to have been pitched into good old-fashioned struggles between Left and Right. One might be inclined to conclude that, after a generation of middle-ground consensus, there has been a revival of substantive debate about ideology on this side of the Atlantic, and even a startling move towards something of the kind in America – where true ideological differences between parties are almost unknown.

In London and in France, the contests were apparently between socialist adherents of the Old Faith (or historical throwbacks, if you prefer) and proponents of the market theory of wealth creation who were undaunted by the recent troubles of the capitalist system. Ken Livingstone and Fran?ois Hollande represented the politics that time had once forgotten: unashamedly committed to the power of the state and to belief in the virtue of public spending. In the opposing corners, Boris Johnson positioned himself clearly and explicitly to the Right of his own party leadership, and Nicolas Sarkozy defended both free markets and foreign interventionism.