British Prime Minister Gordon Brown backs Obama. Russell Brand (we think, but he didn’t make himself too clear on this one at the VMAs…) is also in the Obama Camp. Now a BBC poll shows that the majority of the world, given the chance, would stamp their hopes next to Obama’s name on the ballot. But do Brits back Obama wholeheartedly, or because there seems no better option?

The results of a BBC survey released Tuesday suggest that presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is the preferred candidate internationally. The poll spanned 22 countries and surveyed 22,500 people to discover that global sentiment leans in Obama’s favor by a four-to-one margin, with 46 percent of participants saying that Obama would improve America’s relationship with the rest of the world if he took office, compared to 20 percent who believed the same of Republican Sen. John McCain. All 22 countries were dominated by a pro-Obama sentiment, but four out of ten survey participants remained undecided.

That’s forty percent of the world not being able to choose between two of the most politically opposed candidates America has ever seen. These guys are the definition of polar opposites: young vs. old, liberal vs. conservative, rookie vs. veteran…Or so it seems.

Judging by the furious debate being held by my British friends in a Facebook group I created called “What the World thinks of America”, Obama and McCain are no more than a hair’s width apart.

“It’s the same guy in different packaging,” said Conor Quigley, who graduated from my alma mater (the University of Kent) with a degree in social anthropology. “Seriously, this decision is as important as deciding Coke or Diet Coke in McDonalds.”

“Make your own minds up as to which is McCain and which is Obama,” added John Bakie, a Kent graduate in politics and history.

What is the reasoning behind this crazy talk? Many Brits believe that there is one thing and one thing only controlling the decisions being made in the White House, regardless of who is making them: it’s that dirty word again…OIL.

“Resources are scarce, and it’s not irresponsible of Bush or McCain to secure them for their own citizens,” said Bakie. “Oil has peaked, and it is only going to become more expensive and more difficult to obtain in the future. You may think [Washington’s] attempts to secure oil in the Middle East are a waste of cash, but really they need to secure [oil] because if they don’t then Russia or China will eventually.”

Regardless of experience, race or views on the Iraq war, my slightly pessimistic friends believe that no president can resist the battle for oil.

“[Obama and McCain] are both guilty of taking part in the back-scratching culture of U.S. politics,” said politics graduate Dave Roe. “It’s just that Obama has been doing it for fewer years so it’s easy to paint him as this kind of idealist.”

And now is no time for ideals.

“Long-term of course the U.S. needs to reduce its dependency on oil,” said Bakie. “But it takes time and money to develop these technologies, and given a recession is upon the western world, both time and money are also scarce. We are moving towards a trilateral age, and the three powers of the world (the U.S., Russia and China) will all be aiming to secure the world’s remaining resources for themselves, and it’s quite reasonable to see why they would.”

So, what happens when the oil runs out? According to these Englishmen, governments don’t peer far enough into the future to care.

“None of this is sustainable in the long-term,” said Bakie about the oil rush. “But governments aren’t long-term, and the people who run them now will be dead in 30 years. But that’s another problem altogether…”

In the meantime, despite growing apathy in Britain for either candidate, many Brits are leaning toward Obama. It was an unusual move for a British government head, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also indicated his preference for Obama this week. Prime Ministers in the past have favored a more neutral approach to presidential politics by declining to state a preference, the Telegraph describes, but Mr. Brown broke the mould by writing an article for Parliamentary Monitor magazine praising Obama’s political mentality and stating that the Democrats were “generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times.”

And then there was Russell Brand, declaring his Obama-love in a manner much less tactful than the British PM. While hosting the MTV Video Music awards, the British comedian ignited a frenzy of complaints by pleading for America to elect Obama “on behalf of the world,” calling President Bush a “retarded cowboy” and no doubt successfully managing to embarrass both the British public and Democrats everywhere.

But despite Brown’s backing, a nine percent lead in a BBC world service poll, and Russell Brand’s ruined career, the Obama campaign has suffered some setbacks recently. A number of polls indicated a lead for McCain after the Republican convention, and critics attributed a renewed urgency in Obama’s recent public appearances to the explosion of support for vice-presidential candidate, Gov. Sarah Palin. The democrats will be pleased to know that Palin isn’t going over so well in the U.K.

“I think McCain’s election would be a bad time for America,” said Daniel Clarke, who graduated from the University of Kent with a degree in Biomedical Science. “Put aside any problems you have with him, and think [about the] very real chance that [Gov. Sarah] Palin could become president. Now there’s a headache for the world: an evangelical, pro-life, pro-guns “hockey mum” commander-in-chief who wants creationism taught in schools and Alaska to be independent.”

It’s refreshing to virtually hop across the Atlantic and get a bird’s eye view of what my generation is thinking about the presidential campaign: many thanks to the twenty-something British intelligentsia.

N.B: The conversation has since spiraled out of control into discussions of “dying superpowers” and the end of world (2012 apparently).