"Today Hampstead - tomorrow the world," is the rallying cry in the marketing department of The Guardian, Britain's mildly leftist national daily newspaper.
In the UK, The Guardian's view of life, the universe and everything is seen as politically liberal, both with a large and a small 'L'.
But in the USA, where the newspaper has set its expansionist sights, it will be viewed in some quarters of Washington and at Fox News, in similar vein to a Soviet tank rolling up Capitol Hill.
It will bee seen as highly significant by the likes of Fox TV pundit Ann Hart Coulter that Guardian Newspapers' ceo Carolyn McCall chose the World Newspaper Congress in Moscow as the venue at which to announce the paper's invasive ambitions.
Quoth McCall: "Our ambition is to be the leading global liberal voice. We will be announcing quite soon our plans for America, which will include expanding on the web, signing up people in the States, and we are also going to do print."
According to McCall, the paper's online version, Guardian Unlimited is very popular stateside. "There's a real market for liberal journalism in America, given that there seems to be a large group of people that are very attracted by our coverage on the web, and part of that is because they cannot really get that kind of voice from their own media for a variety of reasons.
She added that there is now "space" for the Guardian on a global stage. "You look at other players that would have occupied that space and in some way or another they have been undermined or weakened."
However, back the in damp fastnesses of the United Kingdom, some observers speculate that the Guardian's real motive is an attempt at revenge for the Boston Tea Party.
Data sourced from MediaGuardian.co.uk; additional content by WARC staff
