Twenty years ago, Conservatism all but died in Scotland. Tony Blair’s landslide victory made Scotland, at least in terms of its Westminster representation, a Tory-free zone. At no point since has the party won more than a single Scottish seat, and the last time the party won more than a quarter of the Scottish vote, in 1983, its current leader, Ruth Davidson, was four years old. Two years ago, the Tories won just 14 per cent of the vote, an even worse result than 1997.

The French election, of unprecedented interest, hazard and potential for violence, has been largely about who is to blame. Blame for what, exactly? For the country’s chronic malaise. But is it the fault of the bankers, the bosses, the bureaucracy, or the immigrants? Quite often the British press gives the impression that France is in some kind of deplorable condition that we must at all costs avoid, a hybrid, perhaps, of economic Guinea-Bissau and ideological North Korea.

It’s not the free movement of people I spend my nights fretting about; it’s the free movement of pests. It’s the thuggy Spanish bluebells invading our woodland and killing our own delicate flowers; it’s the Asian caterpillars devastating our box hedges; it’s the black-winged killer ladybirds from North America wiping out our spotted red ones with a nasty fungal disease. And — particularly worrying for anyone trying to run a household — it’s the tiny webbing clothes moths, thought to have originated from South Africa, their larvae feasting on our favourite cardigans and carpets — probably feasting right now, under the very bed in which we are failing to sleep.