Sixty years on, the attitude of Londoners towards Americans is radically different [bold mine-DL].  After September 11, 2001, the U.S. Embassy building in Grosvenor Square was supplied with large concrete barriers and bollards to ward off a car or truck bomb. Armed policemen patrol day and night and unsuccessful efforts were made to turn some streets into no-entry zones. ~Carol Gould

The first time I read this, I thought, “That makes no sense, I must have missed something.  How does that show anything about the attitude of Londoners?”  Then I read it again and I realised that the Standard had outdone itself when it comes to fits of crazy anti-European rhetoric.  Even Clive Davis finds it a bit odd.

The problem here, of course, is that all U.S. embassies around the world experienced massive increases in security in the wake of the largest terrorist attack in American history.  Why might that have happened?  Could it be that the government was not so much concerned about unruly yobbish mobs blowing up the front gate as they were concerned to avoid repeats of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam?  No, it’s obviously the evil-minded Londoners who wanted to ram bomb-laden trucks into the side of the building.  (Of course, there were and still are potential terrorists in Britain, but they are not exactly, shall we say, West Enders.  Ms. Gould could talk about the Britons who actually do hate America, but that could get dicey and involve all sorts of deviations from the party line.) 

The next bit of the article is not much better, blaming neighbours of the embassy for being concerned that their neighbourhood might enjoy the sort of explosive attentions the IRA paid to the financial center of London in 1993.  These people have probably overreacted and embarrassed themselves, but it is not difficult to understand why the residents of Mayfair don’t want a prime potential terrorist target literally in their frontyard.  It is, after all, their country and their neighbourhood.  If The Weekly Standard doesn’t like it, they can go cry to their best friend Tony, for whom probably large proportions of the Mayfair protesters voted in the last general.  Frankly, it’s easy to belittle people in central London from the bowels of the AEI building, and if there are British citizens who have hardly distinguished themselves with stoicism and hardy endurance there isn’t much tolerance at the Standard and similar vehicles for anything resembling independence of thought by Europeans.

Take the next item: complaining about opposition to an American trying to buy Arsenal.  First of all, any sensible person knows that you don’t want to buy Arsenal, for goodness’ sakes–you would want to buy a respectable team.  (I will be now be deluged with death threats.)  If the people who own Arsenal don’t want to sell a controlling stake to an American, that seems to me to be a legitimate business decision.  Having endured the delights of foreign oligarchs from Russia buying up football teams, it might be that football owners and fans have had quite enough of making their national sport into a field for foreign venture capitalism.  If Canadians or Brits tried to buy an NFL franchise or, an even more serious threat to national pride, a NASCAR team, the American sports media would raise holy hell over it and every conservative would throw a fit about how “those people” don’t know anything about our football.  This has the virtue of being true.  As for the whining about too many stairs and no A/C in the Tube–suck it up!

The last time I was in Britain, which was admittedly eight years ago now, I was shocked at how accommodating and Americanised people had become.  People in London were short-tempered and rude, as almost all big city people are, but most Britons were decent, pleasant people who gave us no grief.  Yes, this was pre-9/11, pre-Bush, pre-Iraq, but what stunned me was that the once unforgiveable crime of putting ice in tea had become a commonplace thing.  In spite of what they must have regarded as an evil importation of bad taste, the British have accepted iced tea and now do not stare at you uncomprehendingly when you request it.  I don’t know whether it is actually progress–some might take it as proof that Britain really has gone down the drain–but it seems bizarre to regard the British today as being more anti-American than many of them were at the height of the CND days.  The main examples Ms. Gould uses are examples where Britons are reacting against symbols of American wealth and power, which always put people on edge in every corner of the world when they are wielded by foreigners in your own country.  It may not be terribly edifying, but there is nothing strange about it, nor is it necessarily representative of seem broader shift in British attitudes.  They are not turning against Americans or America as such, and therein lies all the difference in the world.