For some time now it’s been evident that there’s a migratory movement in the other direction with French citizens opting to live and work in the UK. This has produced what demographers call a lop-aged situation, well described by Jean-Pierre Raffarin when he remarked to Tony Blair that “we send you our young people and in return we get your oldies”. Exactly: of the minimum 200,000 Gauls now settled in the UK a majority are young and working. When asked what motivated their move most of them say that it’s easier to find work there, workplaces are more open and less hierarchised and, especially for anyone going into business on their own, there’s much less need to tangle with unhelpful bureaucrats.

Traditionally, the French weren’t keen on living abroad. As Agnès Catherine Poirier, a London-based journalist, explains, “They had everything they needed at home ... that’s no longer the case.” In a place like Ashford, Kent, for example, scores of French have discovered a land of opportunity ... and to insure against gnawing nostalgia they support some excellent restaurants and a weekly food market. It was people like these adoptive Ashfordiens who told TNS Sofres pollsters recently that they felt they were in England “indefinitely”. I wonder. With age comes, if not wisdom, certainly infirmity and well before they’ve bought their first walking-stick many of them may feel they want better health care than the NHS can provide; if they have kids, they’ll certainly have qualms about puttint them into John Stonehouse Comprehensive. And how do they feel about (as Tony Blair wants them to) working till 67 for a UK-style pension? That much abused “French social model”, even with the attendant bureaucracy, has much to be said for it.
 

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