Listening in to Prime Minister’s Questions from across the Atlantic this week, I noticed a common theme. There was outrage that three British bankers are facing extradition to the US; alarm that the safety of British forces in Afghanistan is deemed threatened by US military actions; complaints about the failure of Western (read, principally: America’s) leaders to do more about Africa.

Flipping randomly through the British press, I spy an ugly American on every page — and I don’t even have to read The Guardian. In The Sunday Times last weekend you could find Jeremy Clarkson fulminating about America’s authoritarianism and its taste for double-egg burgers. (He may have been on to something about the first but I’ve lived in the States a while now and never seen a double-egg burger. More’s the pity.) A part of John Prescott’s latest troubles are caused, I suspect, by the fact that it was a wealthy American at a Colorado ranch with whom he was consorting — an uncivilised, brash American who was plotting to turn that avatar of British cultural achievement, the Millennium Dome, into a casino.

More seriously, the outpouring of comment on the July 7 anniversary seems to reflect a broad consensus that, rather than establishing any solidarity with America, the terrorist attacks merely underlined the differences. We British, it is universally averred, deal more calmly and understandingly with the threat and don’t go clumsily invading third countries.

To cap it all, on July 4 of all days, a YouGov poll in The Daily Telegraph suggested the British have never had a lower regard for America.

Does this epidemic of anti-American sentiment really reflect an historic disenchantment? Or is it just a passing phase, a rejection of current American leadership, not the people and the nation?

That the Bush Administration is not liked in Britain is not in doubt, but the YouGov poll plumbs new depths. One per cent — yes, 1 per cent — of the British public think George W. Bush is a great world leader. There are probably more people who think England can still win the World Cup.

The poll then highlights the usual litany of things that the British don’t like about US policy — the war in Iraq, torture, detention without trial. But it purports to suggest something much worse: that it’s not just this Administration’s bungled war and slightly unsettling attitude to the rule of law that gets British goats. It’s the whole damn, four wheel-driving, McDonald’s-munching, Starbucks-slurping, Barbie-fondling lot of them. The polls found that substantial majorities despise American society, believing it to be divided economically and racially, violent, uncaring, ignorant.

There are some bright spots — but even they make you wonder. Steven Spielberg, who made his money making films about odd-looking creatures from outer-space, is the most popular American. Michael Jackson, who spent his money trying to make himself look like he belonged in one of those films, is the least popular.

There are some methodological objections to the poll. The questions were, shall we say, somewhat loaded. What about the questions not asked? Do you think the world would be better off today if, say, France or Germany were the dominant global powers? China? Russia? But I don’t doubt that overall it’s a reasonable picture of current views.

A number of things are at work. First, it is not news to say that most British don’t like President Bush. Nor is it news that many have long regarded Americans as, shall we say, not quite our class. But they don’t think the President is some sort of aberrant figure in American society. What they dislike about him is that he represents the things they think they know about America and have always despised — its supposedly vulgar, brash, uncultured, uncivilised character.

On top of that, America is now far more dominant in the world than it has ever been: this not only causes certain amount of resentment, it also just makes America an even more inviting target. Let’s be honest. Nobody I know has strong views about Latvian society, so even if Latvia were run by the Devil’s Spawn I doubt we would have strongly negative views about it as a nation.

Then, of course, there’s the media’s portrayal of America in Britain — anthropology lessons in an alien culture with emphasis on the wacko (see any news report about fat people, oil company executives, religious fundamentalists and so on).

Most British don’t like much of what the US Administration is doing now, that’s clear. But consider this: Polls suggest most Americans themselves think the Iraq war was a mistake. I would bet neither this nor any other Administration will contemplate doing anything like it again for a long time. Torture was outlawed by a vote in the US Senate that was 90-9 last year. The Supreme Court — a moderately conservative institution these days — has ruled that detainees at Guantanamo Bay must be given proper legal protection in accordance with US law and the Geneva Conventions.

You can agree or disagree with all of these positions, but you can’t argue that they’re any less American than their opposites. The US is a large, chaotic, complex, multifaceted, constantly changing society. It defies simple characterisation. But it is its very openness, its very willingness to examine itself and have others continually pore over it, that makes it so easy to characterise. Americans are often criticised for lacking nuance. The world could do with a tad more nuance when it looks at America.

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