The retail business world lives and dies by a very simple aphorism: “the bitterness of poor quality remains long after you’ve enjoyed the sweet taste of low price.”

Our Angloweeny Obamaphile cousins across the pond in Britain are getting their first bilious aftertaste in the wake of the Obama treacle fest:

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government’s art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush’s tenure.

But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: “Thanks, but no thanks.”

The bust of Britain’s greatest prime minister - a man of towering intellect and courage whose mother was an American - now gathers dust in the residence of the British ambassador.

Needless to say, the Brits are puzzled and understandably nervous: in the diplomatic world, where every word or action is burdened with significance and construed to convey meaning or purpose, removing the bust of Sir Winston Churchill from the Oval Office has profound symbolic repercussions and this unexpected turn of events has the Brits scrambling for a replacement.

One suggestion, given Mr Obama’s interest in the Lincoln era, is that Mr Brown should offer an artefact relating to the career of John Bright, the 19th Century MP and political reformer who became the most prominent British supporter of Lincoln’s Union forces during the American Civil War.

I can’t stop laughing. Any serious student of the Civil War knows that Britain (and France) unofficially allied themselves with the Confederacy, which had a monopoly over the world’s cotton production at the beginning of the war.

In 1861 the U.S. and Great Britain almost went to war in the wake of the Trent Affair and it is a matter of historical fact that the British built several warships for the Confederacy - including a commerce raider named Alabama which single-handedly destroyed over a billion dollars’ worth of Union maritime shipping.

If the Obama staff has any sense of historical irony it will take a pass on the John Bright artifact and if the Brits really want to ingratiate themselves with the new administration, they’ll send over a bust of Neville Chamberlain - a fellow with whom the new President has much more in common.