America has become so right wing that it will make little difference whether John McCain or Barack Obama is elected as the next President in November, according to a leading US academic.

Susan George, author of Hijacking America: How the Religious and Secular Right Changed What Americans Think, told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that America has become a “homogenised” society, virtually unrecognisable compared with 30 years ago. She said that the US had become so obsessed with wealth creation that politicians who promise a fairer society are attacked as dangerous radicals.

“Many people think if Obama gets elected - which I hope he will - things will change radically but I'm arguing that there is only a certain amount he can do,” she said.

Ms George, who is active in the Transnational Institute, a European social justice organisation, claimed that Mr Obama was already abandoning pledges that he had made in his battle to become the Democrat presidential candidate.

“If you follow the campaign closely in the primaries on the progressive side he talked of change every two minutes,” she said. “Now he is fighting the election he is moving to the right. Immediately after his victory he went to speak to the Israeli lobby, he has approved of offshore oil-drilling and he has a weakening stance on Iraq.”

Ms George said that with 45 million Americans unable to access health care because they cannot afford insurance, urgent reform of the system was required. But she claimed that the debate about health care was being stifled because politicians are too scared of being criticised to suggest change.

“If I was a candidate and I said get the private insurance companies out of health care the Right would attack it, so as an issue it has become very hard to discuss. Now that you have a debate between the far Right and centre Right that means many topics cannot even be talked about,” she said.

“We have moved so far to the right since the 1960s and early 1970s that neoliberalism - privatisation, low taxes, economic freedom - has become completely normal as has the dismantling of the welfare state, which was once quite effective.”

Despite her disapproval of his more conservative stance, Ms George said that she would vote for Mr Obama.

“Obama would be less adventurous in foreign affairs. McCain would shoot first and think later, while Obama would think first and possibly shoot later - so that would be a good thing.”

Ms George said that Mr Obama had better advisers than Mr McCain. Referring to recent reports that Mr McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was formerly a lobbyist for Georgia, she added: “There is something very fishy going on and that scares the hell out of me. I don't put manipulation beyond these people.”

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