Rumour is, there’s people trying to start a Tea Party in the UK. And Australia, and a few other places. Over in England, it’s a bunch known as the TaxPayers’ Alliance, who sound like a stand-up bunch of guys. I’ve checked out their site and they all check all the boxes, far as I’m concerned.

And look, may the Iron Lady herself smite me if I’m wrong, but I just don’t think the TP will take off in the Old Dart. I don’t doubt there’s plenty of folks are riled up over there. I mean, they vote for the Conservative Party and they got a socialist-liberal coalition, what’s up with that? And I don’t doubt their stones, neither.

But I don’t think politics transfers like that. Same sentiments, same principles, very different way of doing things. Politics is a lot about the how, and I can’t see your average candidate over here, going around the town wearing a two-foot diameter red rosette like he was a prize hound.

Nor do I think most citizens of the republic would put up with an outfit such as the Monster Raving Loony Party, standing beside the PM say, dressed as the Jolly Green Giant while the results are read out. That’s kinda demeaning. Also a security risk.

You stand beside the Prez dressed as the Jolly Green Giant, you’ll be wearing that trunk internally, courtesy of the secret service in zero to five flat.

But for all that, I can’t see the Brits dressing up to be serious. To defend their freedoms, or regain them. They just haven’t got the tradition to call on. Nor have we Aussies, truth be told. And that’s why no one outside this country is really getting the TP, and why no one saw them coming.

So we’re a month out from the mid-terms, the polls are surging into the red, it’s the TPers who kicked the thing into life, and yet all the world wants to talk about is the crazy witch lady in Delaware. Sorry, crazy witch-Christian-creationist-Palin-lookalike-lady, Christine O’Donnell.

Well, hell, I can see that. As far as American crazy ladies go, she’s straight from central casting. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s where Bill Maher found her all those years ago, when she looked like a chubby bride outta Jersey Shore.

But, hell, Delaware’s a small state, run by Democrats, and the Republican Party was pretty much whoever happened to be at the 19th hole of the Dover Country Club on any given afternoon. I wasn’t surprised when I saw the TP had taken it, I’m pretty sure they did it by phone.

So yeah, we won’t get Delaware, even though the Democratic candidate Chris Cones has fessed up to being a bearded Marxist, you gotta admire the honesty, but if Christine O’Donnell takes the state, then I reckon they may as well bring the next election forward, and get it over with. Which is why the liberal media love her so much. She fulfils everything they hope against hope about the TP.

And everything they get wrong. Cos crazy-witch-lady is, well, she’s the squeaky rivet. But the TP is a bigger enterprise than that. Take a look at the forecasts on the Senate race at the start of ’09, when Mr Hope and Change was riding high. Now look at it. By my reckoning, the GOP are certain to take Indiana, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and Nevada, and 538 adds Colorado to that list. Connecticut, California, Washington and Illinois are other Democrat seats in play. The party of Nope may get New Hampshire, Kentucky or Ohio back from the GOP maybe Ohio, and Florida’s a toss up as always.

That’s hard times for the high-taxers, and you can put that down to the TP. Everyone assumed they were a joke. So did Obama, and the Democrats — elitists who’d never imagine dressing up. But the TPers know that that’s part of the American way, from Boston harbour to Halloween. We know who we are. We’re people who want to live in a free society. The Democrats are people who want to live in Europe.

The Democrats and the MSM are laughing so hard at Christine O’Donnell, they can’t hear America shouting. Let’s see if they’re still laughing on November 3.

Jack J. Irvine is an American writer who lived in Australia for many years.