WALKING down Piccadilly a short while ago, I realised I was looking at the Paris public transport logo on the side of a red London bus. The RATP logo is rather neat: it shows a face looking up at the sky, which is also a stylised image of the River Seine. Around me, I guessed, most Londoners neither knew nor cared about this very visible symbol of foreign ownership.

Another thought followed. In general, comparing my home country to its neighbours in western Europe, the British are outliers in their tolerance of foreign takeovers, even of quite symbolic chunks of infrastructure. It is not that the British exactly welcome foreign takeovers, indeed they can be quite grumpy about them for a while: there was much grinding of teeth as each British car company was sold to foreigners, one by one, for instance. But after a bit, if the results of a foreign takeover look successful, the British reach a state of something between grudging acceptance and amnesiac pride.

Just think of pictures of David Cameron in Downing Street at the wheel of a new Mini the other day. True, every news report noted that BMW makes the new Minis that have proved such a hit. There was some grumbling about the fact that Minis are designed in Germany. But the headlines were about a new £500m investment by BMW in Britain, safeguarding 500 jobs at the Oxford plant that will build the next generation of Minis. And there was a Union Flag on the roof, and Mr Cameron looked like Austin Powers, so all in all it was a cheering story, which even the most blimpish tabloids wrote up as a boost for British manufacturing.

Yet at the same time, it is not that we are a nation of liberal internationalists. At the other end of the spectrum, Britain is a European outlier in its hostility to foreign governance and the European Union.

That makes us something of a mirror image of countries in western Europe, where neuralgia about sovereignty is easily triggered by foreign takeovers of national brands: remember 2005, when the French government declared the yogurt-maker Danone a strategic national asset amid rumours that PepsiCo might be interested in buying it? Yet those same countries display grumpy pragmatism when it comes to EU governance, or rulings by the European Court of Human Rights. It is not that every Frenchman welcomes EU directives, but broadly the French seek to play the game and extract as much advantage as possible from multinational systems and institutions.

This week's print column looks at this seeming paradox, and comes up with a couple of tentative explanations. Here it is:

PERCHED on the edge of the English Channel, the people of Dover know all about abroad. On a clear day, they can see France with the naked eye, two dozen miles away. Julius Caesar made an invasion attempt there; many others followed. During the second world war Dover was shelled by giant, cross-Channel guns. Few British towns feel so close to the outside world.

Proximity has not made the people of Dover love their neighbours, but it has made them pragmatic. Foreign firms own the three ferry lines that serve the cross-Channel port, the town's mainstay. Locals miss British-owned boats, but would hate today's ferry operators to leave. Now, amid talk of a privatisation, a French bidder is seen as a front-runner to buy the port itself. The tabloid press is outraged, running images of Spitfire fighters over Dover's white cliffs, and calling a foreign owner “unthinkable”.

Such pantomime jingoism sells newspapers, but misses the nuanced position of locals. “Most people probably don't want the French here,” admits Leanne Ward, a teacher's assistant, as she ushers a gaggle of schoolchildren dressed as Romans (bedsheet togas, plastic swords) into the town museum. But if the French brought investment, she says, “People would start to come round.” The local MP wants the community to buy the port with funds raised in the City. In a straw poll, residents just want someone, anyone, to revive their town, a sad spot that gains little from the lorries thundering through. “I'd like to keep the port British,” says Julie Bowers, a shopper. “But jobs matter more.”

Her reasonable views point to a broader British paradox. Though patriotism runs deep in Britain, the specific link between sovereignty and corporate ownership is weak.

Consider an imaginary Englishman's day. He wakes in his cottage near Dover, ready to commute to London. Chomping a bowl of Weetabix, a British breakfast cereal resembling (tasty) cardboard, he makes a cup of tea. His privatised water comes from Veolia and his electricity from EDF (both French firms). Thumps at the gate tell him another arm of Veolia is emptying his bins. He takes the new high-speed train to London: it is part-owned by the French firm Keolis, while the tracks belong to Canadian pension funds. At St Pancras station, a choice of double-decker buses awaits. In the last couple of years, one of the big London bus companies was bought by Netherlands Railways. A second went to Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company. In March, a third was taken over by RATP, the Paris public-transport authority (its previous owners were also French).

The Dutch railways logo is emblazoned on buses across London. Thanks to RATP's logo, a stylised image of the River Seine now adorns hundreds more: most Londoners neither know nor care. As for Weetabix, a French billionaire is interested in buying the firm, according to press reports. Yet Britain still feels British.

For sale, but not selling out

That acceptance of foreign investment is the more striking because the British are outliers in the opposite way when it comes to resenting encroachments on parliamentary or judicial sovereignty. Britain tops surveys of hostility to the European Union. Public opinion seethes at rulings of the European Court of Human Rights.

Britain is almost a mirror-image of many countries across the Straits of Dover, where public opinion is neuralgic about corporate ownership, forcing governments to use shareholding rules or sovereign-wealth funds to block takeovers. In a celebrated display of pique, France declared the yogurt-maker Danone a strategic national asset after rumours of an American takeover. Yet the same neighbours embrace European or multinational governance pragmatically. True, not every French farmer welcomes Euro-regulation. Many Germans resent bailing out profligate EU partners. But overall, such countries juggle sovereignty and interests, seeking to plant top officials in multinational institutions, prodding legislation their way and generally playing the game.

These contrasting approaches have more than one explanation. For one thing, the British are more trusting of the market than many on the continent. They know that in a globalised world, domestic ownership is no guarantee that jobs will stay put. As long as contracts are written correctly, so that London buses turn up more or less on time (and remain red), British consumers seem willing to give foreign owners the benefit of the doubt.

For another, sovereignty is not monolithic. Every country feels that it does some things better than others, and defends such national strengths with special vim. The British are proud of their common-law justice system, their armed forces and (despite much grumbling about politicians) their long history of democratic self-government. They are sure Euro-alternatives would be inferior. In contrast, British state-run railways and utilities were never terribly good—so why not let Europeans run them? British carmakers lost their way years ago—so let BMW design the new Mini. In reverse, this rule even helps explain exceptions to public tolerance, as when Kraft bought the chocolate-maker Cadbury amid loud protests: the British think American candy is horrid.

The same is true across the Channel, where the most ardent pro-Europeans are actually seeking to fix a defect at home. Some feel their countries are too small to count in the world, so seek a share of a European superpower. Others despair of national politicians and hope foreigners will offer salvation via technocracy. Many Spaniards can quote the words of José Ortega y Gasset, a philosopher: “Spain is the problem, Europe is the solution.” The British version might be: chronic underinvestment is a problem, foreign capital the solution. It is a less poetic credo, but has the virtue of being true. As for foreign systems of governance, Dover's citizens will tell you: that is what the English Channel is for.