A bit of possibly meaningless history up front: My father’s family emigrated to America in the 1840s, from England’s Bedfordshire county (some of industrialization’s effects on the shipbuilding industries around Norfolk caused America to look promising to them, I believe). My mother’s family, strangely enough, emigrated from Hertfordshire county (contiguous to Bedfordshire) at about the same time, but neither line came within any real meeting distance of each other until after the US Civil War, when both sides settled in frontier Kansas.
I generally like Brits. I find most of them more polite than North Americans, at least sober (an important distinction, imo). Although I’ve had several British friends whom I considered close to me, I’ve always harbored a sneaking suspicion that the closeness I felt was rather a one-way street.
In other words, I have always felt that there is a top-secret club to which most Brits belong, and that it’s deadly exclusive - no others need apply or, worse, even entertain any notions of really belonging, ever, heaven forbid. It’s strange, it seems it’s even a bit of a mystery to me that from which I’ve been excluded, but I always feel it’s clearly communicated anyway - do NOT ever think you’ll be one of us. It’s a subtle ostracization, though, much subtler than my all caps in the previous sentence, and may be reserved for only us Americans (those in the Commonwealth, including Canadians, do seem to be accepted more readily and more sincerely, imo). And I don’t get that from others, not Canadians nor especially Aussies or Africans. I am sure that when mixed parties break up, the Brits all go back and touch base with each other before finally following each’s independent path - like a soccer club reviewing the match immediately after it ends - possibly to deride the Americans they’ve mingled with that night. Yeah, gotta be. 
I have always found this more amusing than hurtful, actually, but I believe it to be true for good friends I’ve had from London and from the North (of England).
Maybe it all goes back to England’s all-powerful, class-dominated social structures; frontier Kansas was surely not the place any sane Englishman settled. Maybe in some figurative way today’s English can smell Kansas’s topsoil on me still.
Now for a perhaps strange detour: for some reason fred smith has always reminded me of one of those colonial gits you mention, despite the fact that he’s American. Additionally, for some strange reason I’ve formed a mental image of fred smith that’s not only likely to be completely wrong, it’s also more damaging to the image-holder (Sir* Geoffrey Palmer) than fred smith (although that, of course, would follow, it seems to me, in fred smith’s case). [Stop reading now, fred, and it’s really not personal - after all, I don’t even know you. 
]
For a long time now, fred smith has lived in my mind’s eye as Geoffrey Palmer (sorry, Mr. Palmer). For some inexplicable reason I always “see” Geoffrey Palmer saying whatever fred smith writes. In fact, I tend to see him as Lionel, from As Time Goes By, although I’m sure fred smith must have little in common with that television character (surely, jesus). Here’s fred loudly deriding the cheese-eating surrender monkeys he knows as The French and the goose-stepping moral cowards he knows as The Germans:
Of course, fred smith has to live with that awful green leather, in the picture above, but I’m only too glad to secretly hold that against him - serves his pompous ass right, I think. … hahahaha let’s see what would make a good story my mind’s eye is such a funny place sometimes.
I’m sure that in some way my mind’s association says more about me, and my background, than it does about either Mr. Palmer or fred smith, but hey, you asked.
*-edit: Of course, I got this completely wrong. 
Sir Geoffrey Palmer is a noted kiwi lawmaker and not, alas, the British actor. My mistake was due to an extemely poor edit (actually, in my haste to slander poor fred smith, I googled Geoffrey Palmer, saw a “Sir Geoffrey Palmer” down the page, and in my awful ignorance promptly stuck the “Sir” bit in and then failed to double-check it in an all-too-brief edit. Christ, how lazy…sheesh. In other words, my error was less cultural than characteristic; hmm, maybe this explains that hint of cold-shoulder better than my assumed cultural bit above?).
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