Tea Parties are contagious, apparently. A bit of global solidarity was forged this weekend among conservatives with the launching of a British movement inspired by our very own anti-tax Tea Partyism.

Outraged by Gordon Brown’s level of taxation and Britain’s huge budget deficit, British Conservative Member of the European Parliament Dan Hannan called on his country’s anti-tax legions to join him in his hometown of Brighton as part of the inaugural British Tea Party event. The Brits came out in droves, some turned away from the packed venue. But Hannan isn’t just targeting his countrymen – he wants to bring the movement to the entire European Union in the hopes of subverting the construction of an EU-level tax system.

There’s probably no better man to lead European conservatives along the path taken by American Tea Partyists than Hannan. The outspoken and sharp-tongued journalist went on the air with Sean Hannity in August, railing on the notion of publicly funded healthcare in both the US and the motherland. He’s notorious for this speech in which he harshly berates Prime Minister Gordon Brown for the growth of the country’s budget deficit.

“Like everyone else, I’ve long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things,” Hannan told Brown. “It’s that you’re carrying on, willfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left … You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.” Spoken like a true American conservative, but with a smarter accent.