Say what you like about Americans but they’re just so much cooler than us, writes Dan Wainwright.

I know that’s not a very clever thing to say to a British audience. We’re a strange lot – the most humble and self deprecating people on the planet but we’ll fight anyone who slags us off.

It’s true about our trans-Atlantic cousins. You only have to look at their politicians. Their president plays basketball and sorts out an icky race row over a few beers in the White House.

Meanwhile Gordon Brown drops open his mouth and tells us not to worry about swine flu – only for the whole country to go into a blind panic.

You only have to look at the Hollywood way in which former president Bill Clinton flew off to North Korea this week to rescue two journalists, women in their photogenic thirties incidentally, from an aggressive nuclear regime.

You could see it being made into a film so easily. They’d get some silver fox of an actor to play Clinton, parachuting in with a crack team of GIs, disabling the guards at Kim Jong Il’s lair and blowing a hole in the wall to escape with the ladies, making sure to leave a cheap box of chocolates on the nightstand with a note, signed with a kiss for comic effect. I know that’s not how it happened but it sounds cool.

What have we got in our politics that would make a summer blockbuster? Some kids have been sneezing, a lot, and no-one can get a mortgage.

That’s gripping stuff that is. The closest thing we’ve got to a good bit of scandal is still the contents of Jacqui Smith’s Sky box and the best thing the deputy leader of the Labour party has to say is she wants more women involved in the decision making. Wow. It’s no wonder then that everyone is more interested in whether or not Jordan will get her kit off round the pool with her new cage fighter boyfriend (she did, by the way).

There are just no interesting characters left in British politics now. It’s all become very tired. Tony Blair was great to watch, seeing him squirm and go more bald with every new revelation about the Iraq war before wriggling out of it and getting re-elected. Michael Howard with his serpent-like voice and flicking tongue brought hours of entertainment. David Blunkett with all his shenanigans and children cropping up from nowhere kept us glued to the tabloids.
And John Prescott. Oh how I miss John Prescott.

Granted we are now in that awfully cruel period called silly season – where the politicians are all away and we end up having to look a bit harder for the news – but I really hope that come October there will be a bit more oomph about British politics. Sadly though I think it’s just going to be repeats of the same, with more swine flu and Gordon Brown shouting, Dad’s Army style, “Don’t Panic!”. Still, it’ll soon be Christmas.