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Although not a direct comparison, figures released by Britain’s Office for National Statistics in August found that 80.9% of jobs were in private industry and commerce — a record high of 24.1 million people — and 19.1%, or 5.7 million, were in the public sector. Christine Kerdellant, a commentator in l’Express magazine, said that even if one questioned the idea of including the jobless in those receiving state revenues, “it’s hard not to find these figures arresting”.

“In 2009, praise was lavished on the French model as the recession was less deep in France than elsewhere as the state didn’t fire people. But this protective duvet, funded increasingly heavily by debt and tax is ending up stifling the country,” she wrote.

The book is written in the first person, supposedly by a successful boss of a medium-sized company who decided to move abroad with his wife and children to avoid “being treated like an enemy because I make a good living”.

In fact, the narrator is a mixture of about 20 clients of Jean-Philippe Delsol, a tax advisor, who is also an author and administrator of the Institute for Research in Economic and Fiscal Issues, a think tank.

Those fleeing France would only speak anonymously “to avoid reprisals from the tax authorities,” he explained.

He said that the figures in his book were only logical. “When you consider that public spending in France now accounts for 57% of gross domestic product, it’s only natural that more than half of the active workforce are paid with public money,” Mr Delsol told The Daily Telegraph.

The huge nanny state, he said, had “modified the very spirit of (French) society by turning everyone into fonctionnaires”. It has worked until now as France is a “rich old country”, but soon “the system will no longer function as there will be less and less people working to support more and more people working less”, he argued.