I confessed in this space three and a half years ago that I was among those who openly wept when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. I had closely followed the plight of black Americans ever since I toured the deep southern USA in my late teens, a time when the civil rights movement was in its infancy, segregation was the law, violence against blacks was The American Way, and Martin Luther King was not yet the FBI's Enemy Number 1.

That a black man could win the presidency was literally a dream come true. Everyone in the world knew something truly important happened on November 2, 2008. But no one knew exactly what that was, and almost four years later, it's still hard to know, harder than anyone expected.

A party apparatchik, who spent most of his career toiling in obscurity, building his party. A tool of the labour movement and other suspect players who, some argue, must not be allowed near the public purse. A not-entirely-successful dieter and exerciser, as of yet. An instinctive consensus-builder and team-leader, who drew criticism for being too quick to compromise to keep his party united in its darkest moments. A relative unknown who sounds like his predecessor, who he served as a senior adviser.