An accidental insight from the Washington Post

Via Alex Spillius' post at the Telegraph blogs, I stumbled across a rather smug Washington Post article about the leaders' debate. At first glance it seemed to confirm my pet theory that whenever Americans write about Britain, every detail about the country seems to go through a strange filter and becomes utterly unrecognisable and alien. But then I realised there was another way of looking at it entirely -

"Quite amusing that the Washington Post article repeatedly refers to the debate as ‘English’. I would normally put that down to American ignorance, but in this particular case it’s a remarkably clear-sighted appraisal of what it actually was – an English debate masquerading as ‘British’. An exclusively English audience, just the three main parties of England present with major parties of Scotland and Wales totally excluded, and to a large extent England-only issues being debated."