It has been a good few days for dreams. Last weekend saw the culmination of a dream which began when a small boy developed a passion and no mean skill for model cars, then karts and finally racing cars.

With no contacts or significant money, his family provided the means to support his efforts through extra jobs and commitment, the end result of course being Lewis Hamilton, world champion.

And then Barack Obama realised an extraordinary quest, which has implications for us all. When he was growing up, Martin Luther King could only dare to dream that one day his children would no longer be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their
character.

Now, 40 years after his death, the election of the first black
president realises the dream for so many Americans. It is an
extraordinary event which will redefine the USA around the world.

Within a generation the country has moved from the one in which Martin Luther King died, to win basic civil rights for black people, to a point where millions of white people have voted to see their national figurehead, who for his term will represent not just America but Americaness itself, as a man of colour.

Of course, the world's problems are no less difficult for him, and he will receive no favours from economics, climate change and Al-Qaeda because he is an African-American. But in his success, and in Lewis Hamilton's, we see something which, regardless of our politics or interest in sport, we can celebrate.

We need hope in our lives, and need examples of sheer endeavour triumphing over the odds, to make sense of our own troubles.

This last week has set more than America free and given us all that bit more to believe in.

Alistair Burt