"As she presented herself to the public, no one would have wanted her as a dinner guest, except under the deepest social obligation."

I wouldn't be that unkind about her but as I've followed May's career I've noticed that she is the kind of Englishwoman that I migrated from England to escape from. Tory and haughty, she is a Church of England toff with the kind of voice (expensively cultivated but hard, trumpeting and preaching-toned) that rattles the glass in windows and sets the working classes' dentures on edge.

For, yes, in this week in which citizenship is a throbbing issue and in which our PM has urged all migrants to become "Australian patriots" I own up to being a migrant from the UK.

And PM Turnbull would have been pleased with me if, on Saturday night, he had seen me at the CBR Brave vs Adelaide Adrenaline ice hockey match at the bewitching Phillip Rink. A damsel ventured out on to the ice to warble the national anthem. Instinctively and as I always do I doffed my (CBR merchandise) beanie in a sincere gesture of patriotic respect. Although born overseas (like almost 30 per cent of Australians and 40 per cent of Canberrans) I deeply, truly love Australia. I am always true to her, in my fashion. I am always true to her, in my way.

And I say "in my fashion" (quoting a famous pro-flirting song from Kiss me Kate) because a thinking Australian's nuanced patriotism is unlikely to be the kind of patriotism the PM has in mind for us all.

Listening to him trumpeting patriotism in parliament this week (how manlyhis voice becomes when he needs it to!) one sensed he has in mind an unthinking, sentimental, jingoistic, Boy's Own "my country, right or wrong" kind of patriotism. Samuel Johnson famously said that resort to talk of patriotism "is the last refuge of the scoundrel". To my pricked-up ears there was some scoundrelism about the PM's and his government's use of the notion this week.

The debate about Australian citizenship comes at a time when some of us who are from the UK (we are easily the largest group of overseas-born Australians) find ourselves engrossed by UK politics. Perhaps it would be more patriotic of us not to give a stuff, now that we are Australians, about UK goings-on. But migration can create strange conflicts and emotional tugs of war in migrants' bosoms.

There are almost 190 nations of birth represented here in the ACT. Surely hordes of Canberrans have fondness for nations and cities other Australia and Canberra still lodged in their hearts and minds. One in every five residents of the ACT was born overseas. This columnist's sincere love of Australia co-exists, sometimes uneasily, with love of the UK and especially of the distinctive windswept, seaside corner of England I come from.

I had expected my fondness for England to wane over time (and I have been an Australian now for 52 years) but instead that pesky, complicating fondness has grown. It is never going to go away, Malcolm. Many migrants know this awkwardness. We live in a state of bi-patriotism that simple-minded patriotism-mongers like our PM will struggle to cure us of.

Some of us, from the UK but happily, blissfully Australian now, were woken up to our lingering UKness by the emotions we felt and continue to feel over the Brexit vote of June 2016. The exit vote, so tragically daft, so wrong, so shamelessly engineered by utter flibbertigibbet scumbags (the worst of them Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson) stoked dismay in my apparently still strongly pommy bosom.

My inner-pommy cares not only about Brexit but also about this latest UK election.

When I asked him why he cared about the election he replied that he had badly wanted a Labour win for dear Britain's sake. A left-leaning Australian he experiences a syndrome he calls CE, Corbyn Envy. He wanted the UK's Labour Party to win because it is blessed with a leader who though flawed has some true, heartfelt, fearlessly expressed, humanitarian, let's-stay-out-of-the USA's wars, Socialism-tinted beliefs. By contrast here in these colonies our Labor Party is led by right-wing, believe-in-nothing, capitalist cream puffs who consistently disappoint those of us who have idealism in our (bleeding) hearts. He, my inner pommy, dreams of a Corbynesque leader for Australian Labor.

"So it's no wonder, Ian" my bi-patriotic inner pommy continued, "that even though I never dream of barracking for England to win the Ashes, (perish the thought!) I do still lead some of my emotional-political life in the dear UK."

"But I doubt that clodhopping Aussie patriots like Malcolm Turnbull understand any of the hubble-bubble turmoil that goes on in migrants' bosoms. They don't get how one can reverently remove one's beanie for Australia's national anthem but also have ample room in one's heart for that Land of Hope and Glory."