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French Twist
Only a year or two ago, the French media was filled with reports of how Britain, a nation with a similar population and economy size, was storming ahead. Unemployment in France's oldest rival was low, business was dynamic, culture vibrant - the Brits even swiped the Olympic Games from under French noses. France, by contrast, was in the doldrums. A corrupt and failing leadership. Top heavy economy, sinking fast. Inner-city riots, spiralling unemployment, unreformable working practices.
Why, then, do birth rate statistics show France storming ahead - while more Brits are moving across the Channel than ever before? And why does Britain, Europe's economic powerhouse, seem gripped by gloom?
First that birth rate. John Lichfield in the Independent reports that France now outstrips Ireland as Europe's most fertile nation. Last year, the average woman of child bearing age had two kids - Britain could manage only 1.66, while Germany, Italy and Spain languish at 1.3 kids per mother.
Life expectancy continues to rise: Women can expect to live to 84, men to 77.1 - putting France at Europe's joint highest, along with Spain.
Lichfield dismisses Jean-Marie Le Pen's claim that France's 14 years of baby booming is down to the large families of African and Arab immigrants: He reports, instead, that the surge in births "applies fairly evenly across all social and racial groups." EURSOC doesn't know where he gets his figures, here: We thought that the French state refused to collect data on race and religious affiliation when carrying out census studies - we just have to take Lichfield's word on this one, as he's one of the UK press's more even-handed commentators on French matters. (He does mention the fast decline in the number of French people describing themselves as Catholic, though in our experience, old-fashioned and fairly posh Catholic couples continue to have large families.)
Lichfield notes that young middle class couples claim to be miserable, and with good reason. Wages are stalling, unemployment is stubbornly high, the cost of living is rising and France continues to fail to come up with a realistic strategy to deal with globalisation.
Looking deeper, we would add more problems: A growing pensions bill, a lack of political courage to encourage change, a deeply-ingrained anti-business culture... it's a spectator sport in some places to list France's woes, so we won't bore you with them here.
But every unhappy country is unhappy in its own way, and France has an unusual way of displaying its discontent: A high life expectancy and healthy birthrate, Lichfield notes, are claimed by sociologists as evidence of a flourishing, confident society.
In a few decades, there will be 75 million French people. How many of these are likely to be descendents of unhappy Britons?
Exodus from Britain
The past ten years have seen a remarkable influx of Brits into France. Some areas - around the traditional English favourites like the Dordogne and Provence - are stuffed with not only British holiday homes but Brits seeking permanent residence. There are said to be more English people living in France today than at any time since the Middle Ages, when quite a lot of what is modern France was under English rule.
It's slightly embarrassing for New Labour. Before Labour came to power in 1997, party figures and their supporters in the media waxed lyrical on the world of wonder across the Channel. Everything from bar opening hours to the state's role in providing healthcare was said to be better in France.
Ten years later, and the message from New Labour is that Britain has outstripped France in every respect. Britain's economic growth has left France trailing, while the UK has taken France's place as the world's fourth biggest economy. Unemployment is down, wages are up, spending is soaring and economic liberty is at an all-time high. Chancellor Gordon Brown regularly blasts the European model from his PM-in-waiting pulpit.
Labour's mission was to make Britain a respectable European country; that mission has not only been accomplished, but the UK has roared ahead, leaving the continental model, exemplified by France, spluttering in its wake. We've never had it so good.
Except no-one believes it. British unhappiness isn't the same as French unhappiness.
Brits are fed up with the authorities urging them to use public transport, only to see services being slashed as fares are spiralling. The London Underground which costs three times as much, at least, as the Paris Metro. Trains are worse: Services are cut, carriages are removed and passengers are advised that they must put up with dangerous overcrowding even if they pay £5000 a year for their tickets. Who in Britain thinks we have it better than France?
French schools can be terrible, but at least Britain's two-tier system of education does not yet exist. Brits who want to avoid sending their children to abandoned sink schools need to fork out thousands for private schooling - and fees are rising at a rate equalled only by the London property market. Even when British students do leave school, grade inflation leaves their exam results almost meaningless - it's no wonder that the best British schools are ditching UK examinations in favour of the International Baccalaureate - inspired by France.
In politics, the British authorities have taken French lessons in corruption and cowardice. France's legal system protects citizens from terrorists, not vice-versa, while the political establishment picks and chooses what demands it feels like taking from Brussels, dismissing complaints from Eurocrats with a Gallic shrug.
France seems sure of its identity. Britain agonises over schoolgirls who want to make a statement by wearing full Islamic costume, while France slaps a ban on the rather less in-your-face veil. Britain wants to embrace difference; France wants to embrace Frenchness: Which country is under attack from home-grown suicide bombers?
House prices in France are rising fast, too; crime is on a par with Britain, taxes are absurdly high: It is no promised land. But, crucially, France offers Britons a sense that they are in control of their lives and environment. In Britain, as Libby Purves wrote earlier this month, there is an "all-pervading sense of reduced citizenship". Complain about the way the country is going and "it's always your fault."
In fact, many Britons are discovering that you can find only "the essence of England" - or what they imagine England used to be - in rural France. The Telegraph reports on how English families are moving to the French countryside in search of a lifestyle and sense of community long forgotten in much of Britain. Are these people nostalgics, fantasists, reactionaries unable to cope with the pace of 21st century Britain? Perhaps - but many couples are in their twenties and thirties, and believe that France is able to offer their children a better future than Britain can. In the same edition, the newspaper publishes one of those checklists of wonderful things about the French lifestyle that would have your correspondent booking a one-way ticket to France tomorrow - if he hadn't already moved here.
France has its faults. There are too many strikes - but the number of days lost to strikes doubled in Britain between 2003 and 2004. (While the number fell again in 2005, by 2006 the trend was once again on the up).
Too many dynamic young French people are leaving to opening businesses in Britain or elsewhere, while too many of the nation's rich are giving notice to quit because of punitive tax laws: But these laws don't seem to keep Britons away. Many Brits hope to work or start businesses in France.
The political culture in France is cynical (see Chirac) and infantile (see most of the left). So, can anyone point to the last serious debate in Britain? In France, the mainstream media is frighteningly uniform, with dissent, usually from liberals, smothered under a blanket of alterglobaliste platitudes - but its digital media, and particularly its blogs, are Europe's most active. Yes, Britain kept out of the Euro - but France stayed out of Iraq.
It is damaging for Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, having talked up France in their bid for power, they now have to knock it to appear credible. Meanwhile, Brits are voting with their feet, discovering that they can only find British values if they move across the Channel.
