But the notion of class war is particularly salient in Britain, where income inequality is greater than in other large European economies and austerity more advanced — and where the traditional English upper class has proven intriguingly adept at preserving its riches, institutions and influence into the 21st century.

While the French sing about massacring their royals at every soccer match, the British are gearing up to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II with an a bank holiday in June. Nobody in Germany knows or cares which university, let alone secondary school, Chancellor Angela Merkel attended (Karl Marx University in Leipzig, if you really want to know). But ask any London taxi driver and they will tell you which ministers are posh upper-class toffs who went to Eton, the most baroque boys’ school in the country, whose annual fees well exceed average earnings in Britain.

From the food people eat to everyday vocabulary and that ultimate giveaway, the accent, class remains a powerful identifier on this side of the Channel in a way that can seem quaint or even almost medieval to continental Europeans. More than a third of British land is still in aristocratic hands, according to a 2010 ownership survey by Country Life magazine. In the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition cabinet, 15 of the 23 ministers went to Oxford or Cambridge.

“It is extraordinary that we are once again governed by the old landed gentry, the Bullingdon Club and Brasenose tennis club,” said Timothy Garton Ash, the Oxford professor and prominent political writer, referring to an exclusive Oxford dining club and the college at Oxford University that Mr. Cameron attended. “The almost Darwinian ability of the old English upper class to adapt has been demonstrated once again.”

There is no such continuity on the continent. Germany’s checkered 20th-century history wiped out successive elites: The Kaiserreich fell victim to the November revolution after World War I. The Nazis annihilated the country’s Jewish elite and exterminated or exiled anyone else with a bit of courage and an independent mind.