[laurencerowe]

I think this simply reflects the positioning of Guardian America, which is aiming squarely at the market gap to the left of the NY Times. There's a noticeable difference in tone between the US and UK comment pages, the US page seeming much more bombastic.

In Britain, The Guardian fills a political niche quite similar to that of the NY Times, perhaps with a little less stuffiness as it does not consider itself the paper of record (a position traditionally filled by The [London] Times, a more conservative paper.) It also has a tendency to be less deferential than the NY Times, but that simply reflects the UK press in general, where politicians are widely regarded as being only marginally higher than scum.