This morning, former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre passed away, at the age of 83, after almost five months of hospitalisation. Barre was Prime Minister between 1976 and 1981, under President Valéry Giscaird d’Estaing, and was responsible for attempting to reconstruct the French economy along market lines after the collapse of Les Trente Glorieuses in the early 1970s.

Barre was an economist by training, and used his pedigree and reputation as “the best economist in France” to effect real economic change at a time when France needed it most. He fought, courageously and successfully, to control it at a time when the UK’s Labour government was flailing and failing. He slashed bureaucracy, cut government waste, ended subsidies to unproductive industries, and fought the all-powerful trade unions that sought to bring down the government with the rule of the mob.

The result was falling inflation, a return to economic growth, a trade deficit cut in half, a rise in the value of the franc, and a smaller rise in unemployment than anywhere else in Europe. His economic policies were a sign of things to come on our side of the Channel, and were a valiant vindication of the monetarist ideas sown by Milton Friedman in the previous decade.

But Barre went further. He combated statism wherever he found it. Attacked by the reactionary Gaullists, Barre defended the victories of his predecessor, a young Jacques Chirac, in securing the decriminalisation of abortion, divorce by choice, and the reduction of the voting age to 18. In doing so, he and d’Estaing shaped a new right-wing, free from the shadow of De Gaulle, in the form of the Union for French Democracy.

When in government, Barre refused to be a member of a political party, remaining steadfastly above the internal politicking that destroyed the French right in the lead-up to François Mitterand’s election victory in 1981. Not a professional politician, he was allowed to be blunter and more honest than anyone else, frequently interrupting and yelling at interviewers when they fell into economic fallacies.

When, in 1988, confronted by a supporter despairing at falling opinion polls that demanded he change his politics and policies, Barre replied, “It doesn’t stop me sleeping.” Later on, he said, “The French people must understand that my policies were right. It’s not up to me to change.” By elevating himself above internecine strife, and holding his principles sacrosanct, he proved his heroism in the most tangible way.

In Barre, France came its closest to having their Thatcher, and even before the United Kingdom had its own. The legacy of Barre was the end of Gaullist dirigisme and the defence of liberties denied for so long by both the left and the right. The defeat of the d’Estaing-Barre partnership in the 1981 election ranks as one of France’s more shameful moments, brought about by a refusal of the right wing to ally itself to a man that promised France freedom and hope. Les Trente Horribles have been the result. We can only hope that, with the passing of an old hero, France can find a new one, inspired by his memory.

For the past two centuries, it’s been beaten into the British to hate the French, and all their (many, multitudinous, myriad) idiosyncrasies. However, as un-British as it may seem to celebrate the French national holiday, today, I found myself hoisting the red-white-and-blue and marking Bastille Day with as much pride as the most slimy and garlicky Provençal vintner. Every patriotic Briton should feel the same.

Despite what people say, what Bastille Day marked was not the end of monarchy in France. Instead, it was end of absolute monarchy: a system of government unchecked by constitutional limits, unfettered by morality or respect for the rights of any person but the King, and, crucially, completely different to the system used on this side of the Channel. Ours, as a representative monarchy, has been enshrined since Magna Carta, dating back to 1215.

Lacking a French Magna Carta, King Louis XVI was free to rule by decree, arbitrarily and without care. For all the boasts of ‘philosopher kings’, no French king ruled with any intellectual rigour or reason. When, on 11 July 1789, Louis XVI’s Finance Minister, Jacques Necker, advised the King to begin to budget his personal expenses, he was fired for his impudence. This act, one of reason against unreason and compromise against absolutism, sparked the Storming of the Bastille three days later.

The distinction between an absolute monarchy and a constitutionally-bound one is crucial. Whilst every French king was grotesquely unpopular in France, the British king at the time of the French Revolution, George III, was beloved by all, despite his mental faculties and colonial successes (or lack thereof). Even the future George IV, whose profligacy with money (and women) is and was renowned, was never under threat of losing his head, for one simple reason: whereas the French monarchs ruled in spite of the people, the British monarchs ruled because of the people.

Constitutionally-limited monarchy gives the framework of apolitical and non-partisan leadership, with a leader responsible for upholding the rights of the citizen guaranteed by such agreements as Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. Instead of being the statist element that is most arbitary, in a representative democracy, a constitutionally-bound monarch becomes the one that is most constant, and most likely to uphold the natural rights of the people from the otherwise unchecked terrors of either an absolute monarchy or a deified democracy.

That the United Kingdom has enjoyed this for so many centuries, and that France’s diametrically-opposed system collapsed so readily in the face of pitchfork-armed farmers (a taste of things to come), ought to be a celebration of our uniqueness, and the success of our (relatively) people-centric historic constitutional system. Our dislike of absolute rule makes ours the exceptional system that proves the rule.