Every time I read something like this, I want to reach out across the Atlantic Ocean and grab some stupid European lefitst and shake some sense into him:

Growing hostility in Europe towards the US could cause “lasting damage” to transatlantic relations, according to Neil Kinnock, the former politician who chairs the British Council.

Lord Kinnock, a former vice-president of the European Commission, said he was concerned over findings of a British Council survey, published on Wednesday, in which 46 per cent of Europeans thought the “perceived overall influence of the US in the world” was negative.

“This kind of attitude is on the increase,” he said, adding that Europeans’ views had hardened when US president George W. Bush took power in 2001, then “worsened again” after the start of the Iraq war five years ago.

The survey shows that rifts in transatlantic relations are deeper than previously thought, with a third of US citizens seeing Europeans as “snobbish”.

A separate Harris opinion poll for the Financial Times, published this week, showed many Europeans perceiving the US to be a threat.

In Britain, Germany and Spain, the US was seen as the “greatest threat to global stability”, ahead of China, Iran and North Korea.

A British Council youth project launched on Wednesday aimed to counter this “mental widening of the Atlantic”, Lord Kinnock said. Julian Morgan, British Council’s head of communications for western Europe and North America said the survey showed a “depth to the [transatlantic] rift that we had not expected”.