And the America Britons Are Becoming Afraid to Visit.
Something strange is happening to the relationship between Britain and America.
Spend enough time in certain corners of American social media and you could be forgiven for believing that Britain has ceased to function as a modern democracy. Apparently, our streets have been overrun by criminals, Muslims have somehow taken control of the country, immigration has destroyed British society, and ordinary people are no longer free to say what they think.
There is certainly crime in Britain. There are problems associated with immigration. There are political arguments over policing, integration, free speech and the appropriate limits of government.
We argue about them constantly.
That last point matters.
Because what some Americans are being shown is not Britain.
It is an imaginary Britain, constructed from selected incidents, frightening videos and political commentary, then presented as though these fragments describe everyday life for nearly 70 million people.
They don’t.
Britain Is Still an Extremely Liberal Society
Britain remains an extraordinarily tolerant country.
People practise different religions or no religion at all. Mosques, churches, synagogues and temples operate within the same society. People openly criticise the Prime Minister, government policy, religion, immigration, the monarchy and just about every other institution imaginable.
That doesn’t mean everyone gets along. They don’t.
But disagreement isn’t evidence that democracy has failed.
Quite the opposite.
A liberal democracy is not a society in which everyone agrees. It is a society capable of accommodating profound disagreement without requiring everyone to become the same.
And the suggestion that Britain has somehow been “taken over” by Muslims becomes particularly strange when placed against demographic reality.
In the 2021 Census, Muslims represented 6.5% of the population of England and Wales, around 3.9 million people.
That is an important community. It isn’t a demographic takeover.
There is another uncomfortable reality behind that rhetoric. Home Office hate-crime statistics for the year ending March 2026 recorded a 15% increase in religious hate crimes targeting Muslims compared with the previous year.
So there are real social problems worth discussing.
But they aren’t necessarily the problems being sold through the algorithm.
Now Turn the Camera Around
There is also something rather ironic about Americans warning British people about how dangerous Britain has supposedly become.
Ask some British people how they feel about visiting America and you can encounter an entirely different collection of anxieties.
Guns.
Mass shootings.
Violent crime.
Immigration enforcement and ICE.
For people accustomed to British society, the ubiquity of firearms in parts of American life can be difficult to comprehend.
This isn’t simply some imaginary British invention either. Current British government USA travel advice explicitly discusses violent crime and gun crime. It tells British travellers that mass-shooting incidents can happen and points them towards American guidance about what to do during an active-shooter incident.
That doesn’t mean America is an extraordinarily dangerous place for every British tourist. In fact, the same British government advice specifically states that violent crime and gun crime rarely affect tourists.
And that’s precisely the point.
Reality is complicated.
Social media isn’t.
The America Britons See
The same distortion can therefore operate in both directions.
An American scrolling through social media might see a confrontation in London, a protest somewhere in England, footage involving Muslim demonstrators and a violent incident from another city.
Put those clips together and Britain can look terrifying.
- A British person can do exactly the same thing with America.
- A school shooting.
- An armed police confrontation.
- An immigration enforcement operation.
- Street crime.
- Political violence.
- Another mass shooting.
Stack enough frightening images together and America begins to look like a country in permanent crisis.
Neither picture adequately represents ordinary life.
Millions of Americans get up every morning, take their children to school, go to work, meet friends, walk their dogs, go shopping and return home without being shot.
Millions of British people similarly go about their lives without encountering religious extremism, street violence or marauding gangs.
Boring reality doesn’t perform particularly well on social media.
Fear does.
Fear Is a Product
And that may be the real issue.
If your understanding of another democracy comes primarily from an algorithm showing you its most frightening 30 seconds of the day, you aren’t really seeing that country.
You’re seeing a product.
The algorithm doesn’t necessarily need to lie.
That is what makes this phenomenon so powerful.
A video of a crime can be completely genuine.
A riot might really have happened.
A disturbing arrest may be authentic.
A controversial demonstration might genuinely have taken place.
The distortion comes from selection.
Show someone enough exceptional events without showing them the millions of ordinary events surrounding them and eventually the exceptional begins to feel normal.
The individual pieces can be true while the picture they collectively create is profoundly misleading.
We Should Be Careful About Doing the Same Thing to America
There is a temptation for British people to respond to exaggerated American portrayals of Britain by simply reversing the argument.
“You think Britain is dangerous? Look at America.”
I don’t think that gets us anywhere.
Britain has problems.
America has problems.
Both are democracies containing tens of millions of ordinary people who don’t resemble the caricatures circulated about them.
There are legitimate conversations to be had about American gun violence and immigration enforcement, just as there are legitimate conversations to be had about British crime, immigration, integration and policing.
But legitimate criticism is different from constructing an entire country from its worst moments.
Democracies Shouldn’t Be Taught to Fear Each Other
This is where the issue becomes more serious than a disagreement between British and American social-media users.
Britain and America are mature democracies with extraordinary historical, cultural, economic and personal connections.
Yet increasingly, citizens can inhabit information environments in which another democratic society is presented not merely as different, but as frightening, dysfunctional or morally collapsed.
Once people accept that caricature, almost anything can be fitted into it.
- A crime becomes proof that society has collapsed.
- A protest becomes proof that extremists have taken over.
- An arrest becomes proof that freedom has disappeared.
- A migrant becomes representative of millions of migrants.
- A Muslim becomes representative of Islam.
- A gunman becomes representative of America.
- Complex societies become stereotypes.
And human beings disappear behind political narratives.
Britain Isn’t the Country You’ve Been Sold
Britain isn’t perfect.
Nobody living here seriously believes that it is.
We complain about our government. We complain about the police. We complain about immigration. We complain about trains, taxes, potholes, the NHS and, with extraordinary dedication, the weather.
That isn’t evidence of a failed democracy.
It is partly what living in one sounds like.
America isn’t reducible to guns, shootings or immigration raids either.
But perhaps both countries should be asking how easily their citizens are being persuaded to judge another democracy through its most frightening moments.
Because the imaginary Britain being sold to some Americans doesn’t exist.
And if British people start believing that America consists only of guns, crime and ICE, we’ll have created an imaginary America in response.
Democracies don’t become stronger when their citizens are taught to fear other democracies.
They become stronger when people learn to recognise the difference between reality and the version of reality somebody has selected for them.