To be an intelligent human often means you have a good sense of patterns. There are days when you're hypersensitive to patterns, in effect, seeing bias where there's isn't really any. We all do it, and seeing how much bias about the UK and the Anglo-Saxon model there is in the Eng. lang. press it is easy to understand how it can turn into a broader (but not completely accurate) reading of a poisonously anti-French (or anti-EU) culture everywhere.

But hey, that is the price of vigilance. There are days when I can barely listen to a TV debate or read a newspaper column because of the inbuilt humbug assumptions about market=efficiency...

I've noted in a reply to Mephistopheles that it's a big generalisation to claim that socialism etc. are entirely absent from the USA too. The history of them has been carefully obscured, but should not be forgotten.

However, what I really wanted to say is that in the end, Jerome is at least partly right.

After all the majority of voting Britons have not voted for social democracy by the front door since 1979. Tony Blair does not relentlessly trash the values of public service (and public servants) just because he is a somewhat vain and shallow character. The focus groups and internal polls in the South East and in Cheshire and many other parts of the country show that Britons have bought into the Thatcherite mindset in a big way. There may be a legacy of socialism in this country, but it is not only a long way from power, but a long way from popularity outside of the frozen provinces.

Since I am ranting incoherently, I'd like to put a marker down about "efficiency." The market is only efficient in theory and often for only a given definition of efficiency. A market of one form or another is often the best solution, but often it is not.

Thus, the elites who promote markets above all are often not placing efficiency above fairness, but placing ideology above reality, leading to neither fairness nor efficiency...

As though the United Kingdom is a little usurping agent of the United States hanging on the fringe of Europe to  come swinginging in, dividing and conquering.

However, Mephistopheles's idea of Keynes is not at all accurate.  Keynes was not a socialist or a social democrat.  (He was actually a member of the Liberals, who, at the time, were still in favor of free markets.  He didn't trust the Tories, because their ideas were the ideas of the past, and Labour was full of Marxists.)  He believed that, in general, markets should be left alone, but that at times government could intervene as a way of making recessions less severe through worker programs -- thus allowing the economy to remain near potential output.  That's about it.  He favored stabilization of the market.

There seems to be a fundamental difference in how Americans (maybe Brits, too) and Europeans view the welfare state.  Americans tend to view it as existing to do jobs seen as necessary -- unemployment compensation, the EPA, health care and income for the elderly, and so on.  (The vast majority of Americans, by the way, support socialized health care, but they're too easily distracted by issues dealing with boys kissing.)

Europeans tend to see it as dealing with issues of social justice -- "fairness" is, I guess, the word often used.  I think there's a deep difference in how Americans and Europeans view fairness, as well.  If income redistribution goes beyond basic necessities, Americans, in my experience (I make no claim to those of other people), see it as being unfair.  Maybe it's a different story in the liberal-libertarian, urban areas of the South.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

But that said, Britain is not some "mini-US" either. There are substantial differences between the two  countries, both today and historically.

1. The US's African American population and the legacy of apartheid - clearly central to American identity and not a part of Britain's past.

2. The US has no hereditary upper class, no established church, and does not have a monarchy. Although the monarchy is essentially a figure-head today, it still plays an important role in defiining the nation's identity. Conversely, the US was founded on the idea that monarchy was an absurd form of government.

3. Britain cannot really be considered a multi-culutral immigrant society in the way the US is. It is much more similar this way to say the France or Netherlands, where virtually the entire non-white population has arrived since the 1950s and is legacy of the nation's colonialism. As late as 1950, Britain was virtually a 100% white society and had probably experienced less foreign migration than many other European societies (with the exception of the Irish).

4. Very simply, today, Britain is largely a secular society. The United States isn't.

5. British society/politics before Thatcher was much more statist/welfarist than the US was during the "Keynesian golden age" or ever has been. Thatcher was tranformative, but Britain still remains a considerably more welfarist society than the US today.

6. This said, Britons tend to be much less hostile to public provision, while simultaneously more accepting of nanny state/surveillance provisions. Someone like Blunkett "couldn't happen:" in the US, where there is a fairly singificant left-right consensus against the overweening state. The libertarian/frontier streak is much more a part of the American psyche than it is in any European country I know.

The US still has, essentially, a frontier mentality. It remains (in many areas, especially the south) at a more primitive stage in psychic development. Their focus remains on protecting the PRIVATE space (homestead) - in all possible ways.

Most of Europe has progressed to protecting the PUBLIC space.

Scandinavia perhaps represents the most advanced society on the planet. (Along with Holland - the only former colonialist in  this group)

I write this as a provocation...

You can't be me, I'm taken

Who's this we?

I want you to delete my account please, I've been a member here for a few months, I joined to talk with like minded socialists from across europe, to discuss policies and projects, however that doesn't seem to be possible.

By the way you're a hypcrite Jerome you're the one obsessed with Americans!

It seems to me that one of the important issues is the misinterpretation of American reality that feeds the concept of a special and undesireable "Anglo-Saxon model." For the record, I live in Colorado Springs which is considered by many to be the epicenter of the conservative neoliberal evangelical viewpoint.

Someone suggested that gun ownership should be the important metric. Here in Colorado Springs you can buy guns at the pharmacy, and machine guns at a shop a few miles east of town. Private ownership of weapons up to and including tanks is allowed. It this not horrifying? Perhaps, but the point is "freedom" in the sense that it's ok to have a gun as long as you don't shoot somebody. Government should not poke its nose into what you do, as long as you aren't hurting anybody else. While guns are hard to get in France and Britain, the laws are not nearly as restrictive in Austria and Switzerland. Does "Europe" only consist of France and the Low Countries?

Another point was about Socialism, which I take to mean something about public ownership of services. Colorado Springs has plenty of public utilities (as has been discussed here in the past), up to but not including state-run health care. And Jerome pointed out a few days ago that America is actually more highly unionized than France.

http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1313135&secid=1

Or perhaps it's the secular aspect of the state? Yet the French government pays for teachers in religious schools, England requires her King or Queen to pass an orthodoxy test, and Germany has church taxes. None of these ideas would get any traction whatsoever in America.

So looking at it from here, it looks like there is some selectivity being applied in the definitions, perhaps to the point of distorting the results.

Europe: Private highways and electric service, but public medicine; guns easy or hard to get depending on country; not too many unions but lots of labor actions; churches supported by taxes.

Colorado Springs: Public highways and electric service, but private medicine; guns easy to get; more unions but few strikes; private church ownership.

This doesn't seem to show a clear trend...

What exactly is it that defines the Anglo-Saxon Model in contrast to the European Model?

The 2004 Accessions did provide an interesting lesson in just quite how European the EU15 were. Only two countries, the UK followed by Ireland permitted our fellow citizens full rights of movement immediately. There were skills gaps that the British were desperate to fill. A lot of these were in manual skills like the architypal "Polish plumber".  

Ben P repeated inadvertantly an American myth about itself and managed to completely incorrecly analyse the UK:

Britain cannot really be considered a multi-culutral immigrant society in the way the US is. It is much more similar this way to say the France or Netherlands, where virtually the entire non-white population has arrived since the 1950s and is legacy of the nation's colonialism. As late as 1950, Britain was virtually a 100% white society and had probably experienced less foreign migration than many other European societies (with the exception of the Irish).

The reality is that the US is not a multi-cultural society. It has a number of minority culures but these are subservient to the "melting pot" idea and are often lost once the members of the minority aquire a degeee of affluence. In many ways this reflects a conservative thread in French society that is typified in the attempts to keep the language "pure". Compared to the rigidity attempted to be imposed by the Academie, English is an anarchical, adaptive language which freely habituates words from other languages. The legalistic reliance on rights in a written consitution is also something shared between the US and France compared to the uncodified British one. Rights are more often asserted through an inate sense of injustice - one only has to look at the recent example of gay civil unions in the UK. By using the term to fudge over controvery about religious marriage, the UK has adopted a scheme that has exactly the same priviledges and obligations. Terms like "wedding" and "marriage" are already being used informally without any real fuss.

Like the language, British society freely incorporates the most attractive aspects of other societies. Despite Ben's assertions, Britain is an immigrant society, the large scale movements from the new Commonwealth being only the more recent.  

First, there is the technical historical meaning

I. English Saxon, Saxon of England: orig. a collective name for the Saxons of Britain as distinct from the `Old Saxons' of the continent. Hence, properly applied to the Saxons (of Wessex, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, and perhaps Kent), as distinct from the Angles.
a. n. (the only contemporary use).
b. adj. absol. In this Dictionary, the language of England before 1100 is called, as a whole, `Old English' (OE.); Anglo-Saxon, when used, is restricted to the Saxon as distinguished from the Anglian dialects of Old English; ...

II. Extended to the entire Old English people and language before the Norman Conquest. ...
a. n.
b. adj. (absol. The Old English language.)

III. Used rhetorically for English in its wider or ethnological sense, in order to avoid the later historical restriction of `English' as distinct from Scotch, or the modern political restriction of `English' as opposed to American of the United States; thus applied to (1) all persons of Teutonic descent (or who reckon themselves such) in Britain, whether of English, Scotch, or Irish birth; (2) all of this descent in the world, whether subjects of Great Britain or of the United States.
a. n.
b. adj.

IV. Used for `the English language'. `(Of) the English language (of the modern period)' U.S.; freq. with the implication `plain, unvarnished, forthright'. colloq.    
a. adj.
b. n.

Now, the mainstream Anglo-Saxon (self-description, third OED meaning) press spews all kinds of bullshit in the name of the Anglo-Saxon (third OED meaning) social/economic model. This is not unlike the bullshit that is spewed by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (self-description, third OED meaning, disused for politically incorrect) press in connection with "protestant values/work ethic" and stuff like that. I am not arguing that Max Weber did not have a point when he identified the Protestant Work Ethic as a key factor in the development of Capitalism, but that the Anglo-Saxon Protestant (self-description) business press is generally full of shit when they talk about these things.

Now, it is clead that Anglo-Saxon (third OED meaning) leftists do not identify with this use of the word Anglo-Saxon to refer to a group that they might belong to if they agreed to the labeling, among other things because of the ideology associated to the term.

Can we now go back to discussing subtantive issues instead of whether or not Jérôme is a bigot?

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

Yes, Britain is as much a European country as the rest of Europe both historically and culturally and it has been and, in my opinion, still is fundamentally different from the US (although Thatcher did her best to do away with those differences and, I am sad to say, was partially successful in her efforts).  If you read books on British and US foreign policy during the Cold War you'll quickly appreciate the differences, the US more prone to using hostile rhetoric  while the Brits being more in favour of lesser rhetoric and more negotiations and diplomacy.  The special relations between the two countries, as mentioned above in one of the previous comments, have its roots in colonial history which of course is unique to Great Britain.

That said I do think Jerome has a point when he argues the differences between British and Continental European policy's, especially when it comes to EU policy.  Britain has always taken pride in her independence and uniqness.  Their view of EU has traditionally been one of a looser confederation, while most of Continental Europe have been working towards a more integrated Union, federation of regions(?), with a common fiscal and foreign/defence policy. The Nordic countries are more in tune with Britain in that regard. The scepticism shown to both the EMU and parts of the FUSP (especially the military/security policy) from the UK and especially Sweden and Denmark on the one side and many of the continental countries on the other is much a proof of that.  On the other hand, the Scandinavian countries are more in tune with Continental Europe when it comes to socio-economic issues and a regulated market economy.  

To conclude I would say that Britain favours a looser EU integration. with the, including non-interference into the economy, while the Continental Europe is more in favour of a stronger integration, including public regulation of the economy. (the scandinavian countries being somewhere in between).

Bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits.

In terms of government spending and social security payments, the UK is in an intermediate position between the US and the "Rhineland" countries of Germany and France.

In terms of regulation, though, especially labor markets, the UK is far closer to the US than it is to the rest of Europe.

There is also a sociology literature that tries to group countries by type of welfare state:

• Liberal - low levels of taxation, weak unions, modest benefit levels, and means-testing of benefits  - not generous and not universal (United States).

• Corporatist/Conservative - higher taxes and more generous benefits and less means-testing, benefits focus on preserving "male breadwinner" role (thus "conservative"), so family services underdeveloped and family benefits encourage women to stay at home - more generous, but not universal (Germany, France).

• Social Democratic - highest levels of taxation, most generous, universal benefits and high-quality public services - generous and universal (Sweden).