He is the son of a public sector professional. Before running the country, he worked in the financial industry. He was born in the early 1980s. (A group of people who are honored for their bright minds and stunning looks, I think.) On his way to the top, he betrayed his political patrons. He “acts” as the metropolis, but grew up far from the capital. His marriage has drawn attention.
So, behold, Rishi Macron. And Emmanuel Sunak. No wonder they keep going.
Still, there had to be more to Anglo-French relations than a personal rapport between two men from the elite-ruled upper classes. I’m more and more sure there is.
Britain and France have much more in common than any third country. You’ll be citing Anglo-American or Franco-German counterexamples here.but those are well taken care of relation. This does not mean that the internal characteristics of each party are similar to the other party. This usually means the opposite.
The reason why “special relations” and “Europe’s engines” work so hard, and make such a fuss, is precisely because of the fear that the natural state of affairs between the two parties is disagreement (or worse). Britain remembers with shudder the US abstention in the first phase of the two world wars. French fears of an overpowering Germany date back at least to 1870. Never wait again.
It follows that the Anglo-French quarrel continued, partly because both sides relaxed about their potential compatibility. Eerily, France and the UK are very similar in population (67 million) and output ($3 trillion). Manufacturing also accounts for 9 percent of its economy.
Their armed forces are comparable. Whether building or losing empires outside of Europe now carries about the same weight in world affairs. One joined the European project from the start, one delayed and eventually quit, but neither believed that nation-states and hard power were forms of old thinking. (Look at their nuclear arsenal.)
As you travel back in time, the parallels multiply. England and France became a single entity a thousand years ago, as did Italy, for example. Everyone is at the heart of the Enlightenment, even if the British emphasize empiricism and the French emphasize rationality. Each had more or less contemporary revolutions: a literary revolution, an industrial revolution.Everyone develops a non-racial idea of citizenship so you can become British or French.
The British elite turned to France for cultural cues: the visual arts and manners. French elites, including Voltaire and Montesquieu, turned to Britain as a respite from absolutism.
Even this—they were co-authors of much of liberal modernity—fails to capture an actual fact that set Britain and France apart from their peers.
Every country has a very dominant capital. Politics, media, finance and culture are all concentrated in one city. No European country of comparable size – Spain, Italy and Germany – has done so. Neither does the US, Australia or Canada. The same is true of Japan, given Kyoto’s cultural influence. Excluding countries with under 20 million people, the top-heavyness of France and the UK is unique among developed countries. (Seoul’s influence in South Korea is close to that.) Ile-de-France accounts for about 30 percent of the country’s output.
The result is two equally distorted countries. Many democracies have angry heartlands, but few have populist anger so concentrated in one place. The capital’s vastness also gave Britain and France the wrong impression of its geopolitical influence. Britain has a fifth of America’s 330 million people, but its elite live in a capital with as many people as America’s largest cities. Keep this in mind as you struggle to explain the British delusion.
Last week I spent an evening on American soil with American, French and British companies. Given the language factor, why isn’t it harder to communicate with French than with my English compatriots? Football as a common denominator? Or choose independently? (It’s a financial crowd, almost post-nationalist.) Or, given the French presence in London, and British colonization of southern France, a world of shared references?
all these things. But I think there’s also an implicit sense that we’re in the same boat: citizens of moderate or even declining powers on top of the world’s giants. This is a bit distressing. Being British or French is all about constantly hearing that your best days are ahead of you, and forgiving the lie.
Email to janan.ganesh@ft.com
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