With regard to research performance, the most objective measure must be the citations/faculty score. This is consistently higher for US over UK institutions. But the difference between the highest and lowest citation/faculty scores is much larger for the US than for the UK.
The California Institute of Technology's top score of 400 is 20 times higher than that of Tulane University, close to the end of your listing, while the Oxbridge citation score of 45 or 46 is less than twice that of Leicester University, with 29.
Clearly, research excellence is widespread in the UK and is, in contrast to the popular belief, not concentrated in the universities you signpost as the best.
Ole H. Petersen
Liverpool University