Justin Webb's America

America's lifelong admirer

• Justin Webb
• 13 Nov 07, 04:05 AM GMT

This from the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his big set piece speech on foreign affairs: "It is no secret that I am a lifelong admirer of America. I have no truck with anti-Americanism in Britain or elsewhere in Europe."

So what is this anti-Americanism with which the PM will have no truck? I am never quite sure what people mean by the term and nobody ever seems to define it before using it, which is a pity because it makes it easier for the nastier brands of it to hide around, cloaked by respectability, as if it might be something with which some prime ministers might reasonably have some truck.

Visceral anti-Americanism, bordering on racism, portrays the United States and its citizens as worthy of contempt in almost all circumstances. This anti-Americanism exists, of that there is no doubt. It is often to be found on the left, particularly among those who see globalisation as a threat. But in its European guise it has cropped up historically on the right as well among those who fear and despise a society based on ties of free association rather than kinship and history.

But plenty of anti-Americans claim - I know this well having presented a BBC series on the subject - that their brand of anti-Americanism is simply a rational and reasoned opposition to the things America DOES. It's the policies, stupid. You can admire America they say, or admire individual Americans, but still hate the guts of the things America does.

Gordon Brown's Labour party contains a good many of that second category of anti-Americans. Assuming he has no truck with either form of anti-Americanism I wonder if he will bring this second group round to his way of thinking. I suspect he will wait until January 2009 to try...

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