The managing director of John Lewis has described France as “sclerotic, hopeless and downbeat” and advised British entrepreneurs with investments in the country to “get them out quickly”.
In comments likely to inflame Gallic sensitivities, Andy Street, who was in Paris this week to receive a retail award on behalf of the department store chain, said that France was “finished”.
“I have never been to a country more ill at ease . . . nothing works and worse, nobody cares about it,” he said.
His “tongue-in-cheek” comments were made in London to an audience of entrepreneurs at an event to mark the culmination of a John Lewis competition for start-ups.
Mr Street, John Lewis’s most senior executive, said that the contrast between the moods of