It is not an attractive quality – smugness.

But the temptation to allow it to subsume us all this side of the Atlantic is growing daily, as the world watches the United States of Trump blunder inanely and embarrassingly through the process of appointing a judge to serve in its superior court.

The British legal system is undeniably the result of centuries of privilege and patronage being slowly adapted and evolving to fit a more egalitarian society that is increasingly free from the taint of top down control.

Human rights are acknowledged and our courts are regulated and manned in a way that makes huge efforts to be more about justice than mere political convenience. Not perfect, but striving to be perfect.

I watched the farce unfold on American network TV last week, as a Senate Committee set about determining whether to confirm the President’s (very politically chosen) nominee.

He was asked the kind of question that would and could never be asked of any lawyer in this country as a precursor to their being appointed to highest court in the land.

But, in the unlikely event that such a procedure could occur in the UK, I cannot imagine that we could produce a single credible candidate who would respond to similar questioning with the same degree of arrogance, righteous indignation and snivelling as was shown by Brett Kavanaugh last week.

Were he to be appointed, no one who came before him would be able to unsee the shabby spectacle of this man stumbling through his memories of a beer-loving, good old boy adolescence untainted by the activities that unprejudiced third parties knew with increasing certainty that he had certainly indulged in all those decades ago.

An innocent man with his alleged education and blameless past would never have allowed himself to descend to the inarticulate, pathetic rage and bluster that he demonstrated so splenetically.

And there are very few politicians in the UK who would remain steadfastly supportive of their party’s appointee in the wake of such gurning and weeping.

He must surely be considered a busted flush for his emotional incontinence, if for nothing else.

We are so lucky to live in the UK for many reasons. A justice system that is free from heavy-handed religious or political influence is one of them.

Long may that be the case.