After enduring torments in George Orwell’s 1984, Winston Smith learnt to love Big Brother. After the midterm elections, which are also likely to be painful, Barack Obama should learn to love big business.

The US president, a former community organiser in Chicago whose formative professional experience was helping the dispossessed after steel companies and manufacturers left town, has never shown affection or sympathy for US multinationals. One of his favourite jabs at Republicans is that they seek tax breaks for corporations “to ship jobs overseas”.

The president occupies a Manichean world in which small business is worthy and big business suspicious. Almost as often as he praises Main Street and denounces Wall Street speculators, he proclaims enthusiasm for small and medium-sized employers while disdaining or berating global enterprises.