The British fondness for queueing is well-documented. Less well-known is our reaction to queue-jumping – particularly by foreigners. It is a mixture of smugness that we’re doing the right thing and yearning to be able to bend the rules ourselves from time to time. It is exactly the mixed emotion that greets every case of an international competitor winning a British contract or bidding for a British company.
There’s a lot of it about. Developed countries are confronting a basic truth: it is hard being an open economy when that economy is ailing, your own companies are on sale and foreigners are the eager buyers. The temptation to seek protection behind the national flag or push ahead in the line is growing.
In the UK, Nasdaq OMX may be about to bid for the London Stock Exchange, five years after the British group snubbed an earlier attempt by its US rival. Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Infrastructure has made a preliminary approach to Northumbrian Water, a utility company in north-east England. But what has really prompted the queue-jumping reaction is the decision by the British government to name Germany’s Siemens as the preferred bidder for one of the country’s largest ever train orders – triggering likely lay-offs at a UK plant owned by Bombardier. As Hugh Grant – the actor who epitomises stammering, rule-bound Britishness – observed on BBC’s Question Time programme this week: “I’m sure it makes sense economically, but it’s just so depressing.”