First the Lions go and  thrash Australia in  Sydney, then Andy  Murray wins Wimbledon by  beating the best tennis  player in the world in straight  sets.

What an amazing weekend for  British sport.

No wait, that’s not quite right.  What a wonderful few days for  British and Irish sport.

Sorry, still not got it spot on. What  a fantastic 48 hours for British and  Irish and Scottish sport.

I think that covers everything.

Congratulations to the British and  Irish Lions for winning their first  series in 16 years by beating  Australia 41-16 on Saturday.

And well done to Andy Murray for  taking the Wimbledon men singles  title the following day – the first  male British champion since Fred  Perry in 1936. Or maybe that  should be the first Scottish winner  since Edinburgh’s Harold Mahony  in 1896.

Given next year’s independence  referendum there was bound to be a  squabble about who got to bask in  the glory of Murray’s achievement.

Anyone who still clings to the cliché  that “sport and politics don’t mix”  should look at the reactions of the  leaders of the UK’s two  governments at Centre Court on  Sunday.

As Dunblane’s finest celebrated his  win, Scotland’s First Minister Alex  Salmond unfurled a Saltire in the  royal box and waved it behind the  Prime Minister’s head in an effort  to hijack the victory for the yes  campaign.

David Cameron’s reaction to  Murray’s achievement was more  subtle, but no less political.

The Prime Minister models himself  on Tony Blair, but he reminded us  again on Sunday that he remains a  pale imitation of his  predecessor at Number  10.

The Labour man is  an actor to his  fingertips – but  he’s a good actor.

When Mr Blair  carefully inserted an  Alastair Campbell  soundbite into an  answer he usually  sounded  convincing as if  the prepared line  had just that  moment popped  into his head.  “She was the people’s princess” etc.

But with Mr Cameron you can  always see the join.

The pre-cooked line is served up  with all the plausibility of a pupil in  a school play. Mr Blair was  primetime. Mr Cameron is panto  season.

So when the Prime Minister said in  an interview right after Murray’s  victory that it was “an incredible  day for British tennis and for  Britain” it was obvious that  this patriotic platitude had  not just drifted into his  head.

Just as Mr Salmond  tried to claim the  win for the  pro-independence  camp, Mr Cameron  wanted to boost the  unionist case by  stressing how  British the whole  occasion was.

All that was  missing was for the  third member of the  Centre Court  ticket-poncers club –  Labour’s Ed  Miliband – to claim  that Murray had shown the same  decisiveness against Novak  Djokovic as he had just  demonstrated against Len  McCluskey.

Sunday’s grasping for Murray’s  reflective glory may have been a  little pathetic, but it was nothing  new. Sport and politics mix together  like gin and tonic.

The Olympics are perhaps the best  example. Everyone from the Nazis  to the Soviets to the Chinese  communists have used the games to  showcase their supposedly superior  societies.

London 2012 – both during the  nomination process and the  opening ceremony – celebrated a  vision of multicultural Britain  which is often more of a dream  than a reality.

The 1984 games in LA were an  advertisement for Reagan  capitalism. Tokyo in 1960 and  Seoul in 1988 announced the arrival  of two Asian powers on the world  stage.

The Rio Olympics in 2016 – and  the World Cup two years earlier –  are meant to do the same for Brazil,  another global power in the  making. The people protesting on  the streets of Sao Paolo and other  cities know this only too well.

The Bahrain regime clings to its  Grand Prix because of the  respectability which Formula 1  brings, even as protestors are being  shot in the streets.

And then there were the white  South Africans whose lives were  barely touched by economic  sanctions in the 1980s but who hurt  like hell when the rest of the world  stopped playing them at rugby and  cricket.

The 19th Century writer Carl von  Clausewitz once observed that war  is politics by other means. Had he  been around today he might add  that sport is politics by other means  too.

If you still don’t believe me that  sport and politics mix all the time,  just think about next year’s Scottish  independence referendum.

After Sunday, do you think Mr  Cameron and Mr Salmond are keen  to win the public backing of a  certain A Murray of Dunblane for  their respective campaigns?

Just a tiny wee bit, I would humbly  suggest.