It was a brief but revealing moment. As the results came in, a television correspondent asked a jubilant Joe Biden whether he had anything to say to the BBC. “I’m Irish,” replied the elderly Scrantonian, with the air of a man delivering a clever punchline.

What, though, was the joke? It rests on the audience assuming that there is some elemental, eternal hostility between Britain and Ireland. Sure, it was lighthearted, and I don’t think that Biden is actually anti-British. Indeed, during the Falklands War, it was he, already a senator 38 years ago, who moved the resolution telling Argentina to withdraw. The United States, he argued, must make clear “that we are on the British side.”