Well it helps the stereotypes...

I normally dislike these “heads up” blog entries because most of our audience are already prolific readers of other news content, but the latest edition of The Economist has published a great piece on the similarities and differences between the British and American public. And it can’t have been an accident that the poll (YouGov & Polimetrix) just happened to coincide with Monsieur Sarkozy’s state visit on Wednesday.

It’s a fascinating piece and shows off what telltale conclusions we can draw from statistics (though the small sample size at 1000 per country makes its reliability dubious). Nevertheless, sometimes it is useful to have an aggregate view of a country on certain issues. It seems like we have more differences than we share similarities however, does the Anglo-American “special relationship” only exist at the top, where the air is crisp?

Results may be surprising. America, the nation of “unbridled capitalism”, appears to be more suspicious of big businesses. Britain, the great anchor of classical liberalism, is now more accepting of state intrusion in the name of security. And from anecdotal evidence, I find it severely doubtful that the British Conservatives are, on the whole, backing Barack Obama.

America, as a country, has always been a fascinating case study for me (the others, at the risk of sounding like Goebbels, are China, Japan, Russia and Zimbabwe). And one of the books I can’t recommend enough is The Right Nation by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. John is the leading expert on America and probably knows more about it than the rest of Britain combined. A must for anyone interested in the only superpower in the world (as of right now ) or takes an interest in politics, economics, international relations, the list goes on…