THERE ARE MANY THINGS that can be said against Michael Moore. An odd combination of Howard Stern and Paul Krugman, Moore is the king of all left-wing media, from films to books, who specializes in trashing everything that conservative America holds dear. For Moore, businessmen are always trampling on the faces of the poor, Republicans are always the tools of sinister vested interests, and America is always up to no good in the world. But say this for the pudgy auteur, he has his uses as a timesaver at dinner parties in hyper-partisan America. If the woman next to you admires Moore, she probably dated Dean and is now firmly married to Kerry; if she regards Moore as a bilious blowhard, then she is probably going to vote for George W. Bush.

Things are a bit more complicated in my native England. Take, for instance, a lunch at a famous Conservative haunt in London's clubland in the tense weeks before the invasion of Iraq. As a visitor from Washington, D.C., I would normally have expected a few warm inquiries about the health of Britain's closest ally; instead, I was subjected to a vigorous inquisition from the assembled Tories.

A retired Foreign Office panjandrum denounced the Bush administration for its crass ignorance of the Arab world. A curmudgeonly barrister proclaimed his intention to march for peace. A senior banker complained that he can't visit New York these days without being shocked by the money-grubbing vulgarity of the place. The only person present who didn't regard George W. Bush as a warmongering simpleton was an American émigré who had worked for Richard Perle in the Pentagon back in the 1980s.

This was my first introduction to the world of Britain's Michael Moore conservatives. Think of all the baggage that one finds in Moore's ideological duffel bag--from his first film, the anti-GM attack Roger & Me, through his denunciation of the "thief in chief" in the bestselling Stupid White Men, through last week's standing ovation at the Cannes film festival for his latest conspiratorial anti-Bush film, Fahrenheit 9/11. There is the belief that American politics is shaped by evil special interests (oil barons, neoconservatives, evangelicals); a preference for "sophisticated" European policies over "simpleminded" American ones; and, above all, a loathing for George W. Bush. All of these views are commonly voiced in the most impeccably conservative circles in London. This is not to say that every true blue cloakroom has a stock of Moore's books, though some do, particularly in houses with children at university (he has sold a million copies in Britain); it is more that British Tories have come independently to exactly the same views as Moore.

Of course, the Tory High Command remains officially Atlanticist. The current Tory leader, Michael Howard, based his political rehabilitation, after the disastrous John Major years, on a breakfast club he set up called the Transatlantic Partnership. The Tories like to claim a shared heritage with the Republicans, dating back to the days of Ron and Margaret, and the brighter Tories, such as David Willetts and Oliver Letwin, raid American think tanks for ideas.