Left–right political spectrum
The terms left-wing and right-wing are widely used in the United States, but as on the global level there is no firm consensus about their meaning. The only aspect that is generally agreed upon is that they are the defining opposites of the United States political spectrum. Left and right in the U.S. are generally associated with liberal and conservative respectively, although the meanings of the two sets of terms do not entirely coincide. Depending on the political affiliation of the individual using them, these terms can be spoken with varying implications. A 2005 poll of 2,209 American adults showed that "respondents generally viewed the paired concepts liberals and left-wingers and conservatives and right-wingers as possessing, respectively, generally similar political beliefs", but also showed that around ten percent fewer respondents understood the terms left and right than understood the terms liberal and conservative.
Simon Burns
Despite his conservative views, Burns is a "proud" supporter of the more liberal-leaning U.S. Democratic Party. Citing the big tent nature of American political parties, he argues "You can't just say that, because you’re a British Conservative, so you have to be a [U.S.] Republican. American politics isn’t contained in that way. Turn the clock back to the 1970s, and the Democrat Party went from the liberal Kennedy wing right through to the out-and-out racists in the Southern states. The Republican Party had its liberal wing – people like John Lindsay, Chuck Percy and Nelson Rockefeller."