As America’s election grinds, still contested, to a close, the entire gruelling spectacle can be seen, depending on your standpoint, as either a validation of the concept of electoral democracy or the very opposite.

The waning attachment to democracy, not just among the expanding civilisation-states of Eurasia but also among the West’s own electorate, inspires much anguished analysis in the West. Yet it is striking to remember that even here, in the Mother of Parliaments, ambivalence over this question has been a political constant throughout our history, at least on the Right.