Tony Abbott once said that ‘‘few Australians would regard America as a foreign country’’. That was always a stretch, but it looks especially naïve as we observe from afar the bizarre spectacle of the Republican National Convention.

Speaker after speaker has warned that the Democratic Party is under the control of the radical left, and that America is at risk of becoming a socialist country. Americans will be disarmed and enslaved, they say, police forces defunded and prisons emptied. Traditional values will give way to ‘‘wokeism’’ and cancel culture.