The French Economy Vs. The British Economy Since 1984

See Will France elect its own Barack Obama? by George Will.

"In 1977, France’s gross domestic product was about 60 percent larger than Britain’s; today it is smaller than Britain’s. In the interval, Britain had Margaret Thatcher, and France resisted (see above: keeping foreigners’ ideas at bay) “neoliberalism.” It would mean dismantling the heavy-handed state direction of the economy known as “dirigisme,” which is French for sclerosis. France’s unemployment rate is 10 percent, and more than twice that for the young. 

Public-sector spending is more than 56 percent of France’s GDP, higher than any other European nation’s. Macron promises only to nibble at statism’s ragged edges. He will not receive what he is not seeking — a specific mandate to challenge retirement at age 62 or the 35-hour workweek and the rest of France’s 3,500 pages of labor regulations that make it an ordeal to fire a worker and thus make businesses wary about hiring. Instead, he wants a more muscular European Union , which, with its democracy deficit, embodies regulatory arrogance."