What is everyone talking about this week: From ecology to football, why does France beat us at our own games?
The French have started winding down for summer: a concept alien to our Protestant work ethic. Yet they always seem to outperform us in the disciplines that we helped to create. Could the two things be linked?
Britain's Protestant work ethic is said to be many things: strong, stoic and evidence of our superiority over the Continent. The Government is betting big on growth, City bosses ask that employees show up to the office five days a week and the latter pat themselves on the back as southern Europe takes all of August off. Yet this mindset is not without its pitfalls. Britain’s burnout rate, for instance, is one of the highest in the world, while the pursuit of profit margins has pushed many to cut corners. New-builds, a flashpoint of the Labour administration, are frequently lambasted for being low quality. Not for nothing, a class-action lawsuit was brought against our biggest house builders two weeks ago.
The problem with a society that mistakes growth for an end goal is its failure to recognise that growth is only worth pursuing for the progress it hopes to engender. This could mean better housing, cleaner air or greater biodiversity. It’s no mistake that these improvements mostly concern the environment: against the faux outrage surrounding Andy Burnham’s push for devolution, most private conversations (at home or, indeed, in Westminster) have focused instead on the climate, from the impact of reindustrialisation (one of his key pledges) to that of rearmament.
Yet the environment is mostly absent from the new PM's manifesto. The green energy policies that he pursued as Mayor of Greater Manchester — and hopes to scale as part of a northerly boost — are discussed only in the context of job creation. The debate over whether to allow new drilling licences in the North Sea rages on.
This, to the European mind, is absurd. Britain is a leader in the field of small modular reactors (experts believe these could solve both capacity and ecological issues raised by data mining) and our 11,073 miles of coastline, per the Ordnance Survey, are the envy of larger nations who dream of having our wind power. Calling net-zero targets into question is a fallacy when Italy offers tax breaks to those upgrading their home heating systems. It is hard to find another explanation for further drilling than pure old-fashioned greed: a pitfall of our Protestant work ethic rewarding immediate results over playing the long game. Weaning ourselves of Russian gas is, of course, desirable; yet weaning ourselves of fossil fuels altogether is, surely, even more so.
We love to lampoon the French, in particular, for what we perceive as idleness. Yet their love of the durable (they shifted to nuclear energy in the 1970s) and of doing things well is more popular than we care to admit. Paris, where a military parade and flypast will mark tomorrow's Bastille Day, remains the world’s most visited city. The French national football team could well win the World Cup for a second time in eight years. Their biodiversity and rewilding efforts (not flawless, but bolder and more intrepid than ours) should be emulated.
We could only dream of such accolades. Taking August off may be the place to start.
This feature originally appeared in the July 8, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
