The British Election Debates, the Lib Dem Surge and the Americanisation of Our Politics
   The Americanisation of British Politics: Living in a Fantasy, Liberal World
   The Americanisation of British politics can be illustrated in how our political and media elites see much of the public life of our nation, a good example of which is the Prime Ministerial debates. Our political and media classes inhabit a mythical, imagined Camelot – a fantasy land of ‘Anglo-America’ – where all their references to politics are either British or American ‘real’ politics, or the make believe of the TV series ‘The West Wing’. It is as partial a view of the US as it a distortion of the UK: a world of brave, crusading liberals taking on the forces of darkness and prejudice, ‘the New Deal’, ‘New Frontier’, ‘Great Society’ and so on, and never the Goldwater, Nixon or Reagan versions, and certainly not the mad hatter Tea Partyiers.