It was a bit of fun but there was an interesting question behind this morning’s attempt to imagine how the media and public here would respond to a story like the one currently unfolding in France. To wit, Nicolas Sarkozy is apparently canoodling with his ecology minister while his wife Carla Bruni gets jiggy with a French pop star. What, in other words, would be the reaction to news that Gordon Brown was having an affair with Tessa Jowell while his wife Sarah similarly enjoyed the attentions of crooner James Blunt? And what climate of public morality would you rather live in? How on earth have two societies so geographically close ended up so culturally divided?