One Sunday this summer there was racing at Leopardstown, the pretty course near Dublin, which I caught by chance on television. In one two-year-olds’ race, the lead was taken by an attractive, highly strung colt who seemed sure to win until he suddenly and violently veered to the left and crashed through the running rail. This might seem scarcely worth recording in the Racing Post, let alone the Financial Times, if one had not noticed this horse’s name. He was called Barack.

He must have been given that name within the past year, as an act of homage and yet another example of the intense enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate that has swept Europe. This year’s US presidential election has aroused more excitement abroad than perhaps any since 1960, and Senator Barack Obama has inspired the kind of fascination that John Kennedy once did. From racehorses to the Obama bumper stickers I have seen in English country villages to the huge crowds in Berlin (where Mr Obama may have tried a little too obviously to don JFK’s mantle), Europe loves Barack. If the electorate in November were the citizens of the European Union, he would win in a landslide.