Modern List View Formatting with UK Dates

Hi everyone

I'm trying to use the new view formatting in the Modern UI lists and am coming up against an issue with the date format.  I want to colour all rows red where the Due Date column value is equal to or past today's date using the following code:

{ "schema": "https://developer.microsoft.com/json-schemas/sp/view-formatting.schema.json", "additionalRowClass": "=if([$Due_x0020_Date] <= @now && [$Status] == '1 - Open', 'sp-field-severity--severeWarning', '')" }

My sites are UK-based so the date format is dd/mm/yyyy.  However when the formatting is being applied it seems to be looking at the date in the US format of mm/dd/yyyy.  With the UK format set for my site the item with a due date of 11/10/2018 doesn't appear as red:

However, if I change the site settings to use the US date format it recognises that this date (11th October) has passed and colours the row red:

As my site date settings need to stay as UK format, is there a way I can add any code to my formatting to force it to recognise the date as the UK format?

I'd be grateful for any assistance anyone can give.  Thanks in advance.