Smitten with Britain.

In the typology of the British, there is a special place reserved for Essex Girl, a lady from London’s eastern suburbs who dresses in white strappy sandals and suntan oil, streaks her hair blond, has a command of Spanish that runs only to the word Ibiza, and perfects an air of tarty prettiness. Victoria Beckham–Posh Spice, as she was–is the acknowledged queen of that realm.

Victoria–whose husband David, a soccer star and clotheshorse, has signed a huge contract with the Los Angeles Galaxy team–graced TV screens on July 16 in a reality show about her family’s new life. It is fair to say that her useful insights–“High heels are good because they really lengthen you out”–did not win over all viewers. The show, sniffed the New York Times, “tests the American market’s seemingly insatiable demand for rich, idiotic It girls.” But the real point of the Beckhams’ arrival is that it solidifies the mutual love affair between British celebs and the U.S.

No prizes for guessing who set the standard here: you can look it up on the Times’s best-seller lists. There at No. 3 stands Tina Brown’s biography of the Essex Girls’ inspiration–Diana, Princess of Wales, who died 10 years ago next month. Diana famously loved the U.S. for reasons that have seduced countless Brits over the centuries. On the western side of the Atlantic you aren’t judged by your parentage or whether you streak your hair. And the weather is better.

Here’s the thing, though. Britain is now just about as open and classless a society as the U.S. (The Beckhams’ habits are far more typical of modern Britain than the boarding-school japes of that other ubiquitous Brit, Harry Potter.) So why bother to settle in the U.S.? For the same reason that investment bankers from New Jersey like London–because the two nations have so much in common. Britain and the U.S. are the most messy, undeferential, schlocky societies on earth, places that like making a fast buck, that enjoy celebrity precisely because it is fleeting. Such characteristics may not be the conventional stuff of shared language and wartime alliance that are supposed to bind the two nations together, but these days they are a much stronger glue. Victoria: Welcome. You’re going to feel right at home.