No, he is curiously popular here. I think it may just be that, thirteen episodes of Eccleston aside, he was the first Doctor of a new generation of fans who didn't remember the original show and for whom, therefore, his era defined what the series should be. That assumption, and that huge gap between old and new series', has created a schism in fandom which I think will always be there, now. A lot of younger fans seem to see the pre-2005 stuff as a different show, irrelevant to them, while a number of hardore older fans see the new series as a dumbed down reboot. Those who actually see the whole thing as one show and enjoy a lot of both eras are forever caught in the middle. And then, of course, you have sub factions like the new series fans for whom the show as it was intended to be began in 2005 and ended with the departure of David Tennant and Russell T Davies, or those who rode out that stylistic change but couldn't accept Peter Capaldi because he was "too old", just as among the older contingent there are still some who were fans in the '70's but hated John Nathan-Turner's tenure as producer and therefore write off everything after Tom Baker. We have always been a somewhat fractured fan base, the new series has just made that more apparent.

Incidentally, "England" and "Britain" aren't interchangeable. Refer to England when you mean Britain and you just end up being lambasted by the Scots and the Welsh.