Back in the bad old days around the turn of the century, when Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the former president, was routinely harangued by Workers’ party militants with cries of “FHC out, IMF out”, the economic agendas of Brazil’s government and opposition could hardly have been further apart.

Now, as in so many mature societies, it often seems difficult to slide a white paper between them. Mr Cardoso’s policies, until quite recently accused by his successor President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of bequeathing the county a “cursed inheritance”, are now credited with having laid the basis of Brazil’s current stability. Many investors who, on the eve of Mr Lula da Silva’s first election victory in 2002, dumped Brazilian assets in panic that he would overspend the country into debt default, now regard his Workers’ party administration as the bastion of that same stability.