Here are my theories as to how it might have come about:

1. Unlike in most of the rest of the world  Øbama Køøl Aid (TM) remains Oslo’s most popular beverage.

2. The Norwegian prize committee’s sense of irony is growing ever more sophisticated, as it hinted when it gave the prize in 2002 to comedy ex-president Jimmy Carter, and hinted more strongly when it gave the prize in 2007 to climate-fear-promoting comedy failed-president Al Gore.

3. The other candidates on the shortlist were Robert Mugabe; Osama Bin Laden; Ahmed Jibril; and the late Pol Pot.

Imagine the target is Brussels: now how do you feel about it? (Photo: AP)

But the reason for that is, like you I imagine, I happen to live in a place called “Now” rather than “The Future”. In “Now”, there are many grave threats which prey on our minds daily.

Among the obvious ones are:

Being blown up on the bus by home grown suicide bombers from somewhere like Bradford, Luton or Dudley.

Being blown up on an aeroplane by home grown suicide bombers from somewhere like Bradford, Luton or Dudley.

Being blown up on the tube by home grown suicide bombers from somewhere like Bradford, Luton or Dudley.

Being blown up in Northern Ireland by one of the resurgent offshoots of the IRA.

Running away screaming from a lecture on global warming by George Monbiot only to find yourself being sideswiped and crushed to death by the enormous, badger-like bum of eco campaigner the Hon Sir Jonathan Porritt.

And so on.

But just because these represent a terrible threat now does not mean they will do so in the future. Our Islamist brethren may have decided that, after all, they don’t want to force those of us in the Dar Al-Harb to grow beards or dress in tents and submit to the will of Allah. (Yeah right). Jonathan Porritt may have lost a little weight round his posterior, or even taken over from Jeremy Clarkson presenting Top Gear. That’s the thing about the future: it’s a mystery; anything could happen; we just don’t know.

But we can make educated guesses. One educated guess we can make after Barack Obama’s speech to the UN yesterday, is that the US is about to go through a period of foreign policy retrenchment in which it plans happily to leave its former allies (Israel, Britain, nonentities like that) in the lurch, using the diplomatic space bought by making conciliatory, we-feel-your-pain noises to basket cases like North Korea, Iran and Russia.

It’s a damned good money-saving scam, I’ll grant Obama that. But it might not work. It might WELL not work. And then what do we do?

The same could be said of our increasingly wayward, shambling Prime Minister’s offer to save a few bob – sorry, contribute to world peace – by scrapping one of our four Trident submarines. It will save, perhaps, £2 billion – which makes it sound like a pretty good deal now, but what about the future?

Gordon Brown doesn’t care about the future much because he hasn’t got one. But the rest of us do – or should.

No one disputed the second part (how could you? items for my defence: Nancy Pelosi, Cass Sunstein, Carol Browner, Van Jones….) but the first suggestion prompted an instant outraged call from one listener. And rightly so, as I was quickly forced to concede. Just because Obama looks great in a suit, has a rich, deep (if increasingly soporific and platitudinous) speaking voice, a wife with well-sculpted arms, an interesting breed of dog and two cute daughters does not in anyway prove that he is a fundamentally nice guy. In fact, the longer he’s in power, the more I suspect otherwise.

As Andrew McCarthy so amusingly put it the other day at NRO’s Corner, “Obama is not Mr Magoo”. In this case, McCarthy was talking about the risibly lax vetting procedures the president applies to the appalling libtard cronies he wants to appoint as Czars, such as the recently resigned 9/11 Truther, watermelon and black activist Van Jones.

“The point, of course, is that Obama vetted Jones just fine. President Obama is not Mr. Magoo — haplessly gravitating to Truther Van and Ayers and Dohrn and Klonsky and Davis and Wright and the Chicago New Party and ACORN, etc. Jones is a kindred spirit. Obama knows exactly who he is. Jones was given a non-confirmation job precisely because that circumvented the vetting process. This isn’t one of those things that just happen. This is Barack “Transparency” Obama gaming the system.”

But he might just as well have been addressing any other aspect of the President’s John Gotti approach to politics, which is to say, POTUS gets to be the smiley guy in the nice threads who wouldn’t hurt a flea while his minions take care of all the concrete boots, horse’s heads in beds, and such like.

The fact that Representative Joe Wilson felt compelled to apologize for calling Obama a liar during a televised address speaks volumes for President Obama’s success in portraying himself as a kind of noble, lofty, honest figurehead, far above the grubby business of mere politics. But Obama isn’t. And as several commentators – including Kevin Williamson at National Review and Toby Harnden – have now amply demonstrated, Obama almost certainly WAS lying in this case when he said that his Obamacare plans would not result in US taxpayers forking out more for illegal immigrants.

“I’m a big believer we all make mistakes,” said Obama, magnanimously accepting Wilson’s apology.

But where was the mistake?