Not since Forrest Gump took away the Oscar that rightly belonged to Pulp Fiction has an award been so thoroughly unmerited. Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize is — to use the victor’s favourite word — a triumph of hope over achievement. The prize seems to have been awarded to honour Obama for what he intends to do in his Presidency, not what he has already accomplished.

Obama has made all the right moves in international diplomacy. He has asked Benjamin Netanyahu to halt further construction of illegal settlements, made overtures to the Iranian regime and generally shown good judgment. This is not the stuff of which prizes are made.

Many will contend that the Nobel Committee has a history of controversy, having awarded previous Peace Prizes to Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger and other notorious figures. This criticism misses the point of what makes the crowning of Obama as a Nobel Laureate so uniquely awful. Kissinger and Arafat were men of achievement — dubious though they may have been — and had actually done something worth celebrating when they won the award. True, the committee would have had to ignore Kissinger’s previous war-mongering, but he was awarded the Peace Prize for bringing an end to the war in Vietman and he had also normalised US relations with China. Arafat had signed the Oslo peace agreement, which did not amount to much in the end but at the time was seen as a major breakthrough.

This is not meant as a criticism of Obama who has done a fine job on the international stage. It is the Nobel Committee which has failed in its job this year.