Three and a half weeks from now, Americans will decide whether to pull the emergency brake on a train that is headed to bankruptcy. Across the pond in Great Britain, which got aboard that train following World War II, the sparks are flying as the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government attempts a very tardy, and accordingly much more painful, reversal.

The nation that built the most far-flung empire in the history of the world — not primarily through conquest but through trade and colonization — is now convulsed by protests as the coalition government imposes austerity. “Tory scum!” shouted protesters outside the Conservative Party congress in Birmingham last week.