Why the miserable French should put the accent on English For years we Britons were told that the French had it better than us. We were sold a myth of better weather, finer food and streets flowing with cheap wine. While the British were supposed to be sexless puritans chained to our desks, the French - we thought - had wedded their natural joie de vivre with the best elements of socialism: a 35-hour working week, strikes for extra days off and summer holidays that seem to last longer than the summer itself. Sure, the British might have a slightly higher average wage, but the French know how to have fun. Mais non! It all turns out to be a lie perpetrated by the French tourist board and its Europhile fellow travellers on the British Left. Professor Claudia Senik from the Paris School of Economics has written a bombshell of an article for The Local magazine which argues that a) the French are miserable and b) the only way to shake off their ennui is to become more like the British. She takes evidence of unhappiness from a BVA-Gallup International survey carried out in 2011 that found that the French are the most pessimistic types in the world - even more glum than people living in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. When that survey came out, the immediate reaction was that the French were just feeling down in the dumps because of the state of their economy. But Prof Senik says that the problem is actually far deeper than that. The French are unhappy because they are French and, says the academic, "speaking English would make French less glum." Oh, how I would dearly love to say that to that arch critic of the Anglosphere way of life, President François Hollande. And how I'd particularly love to say it very loudly and slowly in broken English, as if trying to ask for directions to the train station. Senik's theory is that French pessimism is caused by three factors. First, their schools are too good: "In France... the majority of pupils are used to getting bad grades. When they think about their self-worth or their value, they think about these grades, which are usually low or intermediate. Obviously, it is a backhanded compliment, but British schoolchildren are happier because our education system is considerably more relaxed. Several decades of liberal-minded "pupil-centred-teacher-learning" (giving a child a gold star just for showing up to class) has created a generation of Britons who are used to being told that their minds are beautiful, no matter how empty they might be. Ignorance is bliss. Second, the French have failed to cope with the loss of empire. There was a time when France claimed a vast portion of the world as its own and Paris drew hundreds of great artists to paint and compose. Of course, we've all had to get used to being America's poodle or the marketplace for cheap Chinese goods. But France has taken the change harder because its national pride prevents it from getting with the 21st century programme. The professor points out: "There's something deep in French ideology that makes them dislike market-based globalisation." By contrast, the obsession with the financial sector, long hours and easy dismissal that the French scornfully associate with Britain puts us in a better position to exploit the brutal nature of the globalised economy. Saying "non" to free market fundamentalism has not made the French happier people but simply poorer and more isolated. A classic example is Hollande's proposed 75 per cent tax rate on incomes above 1 million euros (which has been sheepishly scaled down to 66 per cent). It's a fine egalitarian idea in principle (make the rich pay for a crisis supposedly caused by the rich) but it has encouraged capital flight estimated at 53 billion euros. Finally - and best of all - Prof Sendik says that France's biggest problem is that it doesn't speak English. She writes: "To be happier the French could do with learning more foreign languages... Being happy is not about speaking the foreign language itself, but about being able to fit more easily into this globalised world, which you can do if you speak English." For every schoolchild forced to grind through boring French textbooks learning the words for table and pen, this must make for very sweet reading. It turns out that rather than the British learning French, the French should have been learning English and taking holidays here for practice. Let the mountain come to Mohammed. It is hard not to take all this in and feel incredibly smug. The French pride in its distance from Britain and America has not helped the country retain a strong and rich identity so much as cut it off from the rest of the world. As with the rest of the EU project, trying to protect ageing industries or preserve an absurdly generous welfare state doesn't increase happiness but leaves you less able to adapt to the winds of change. Vive la différence, indeed - for it is working very well for the British.