The United Kingdom had no coherent view of what it wanted to do after World War II and seems almost to have resigned itself to the status of an American satellite state. In less than twenty years the United Kingdom went from being a global superpower in control of the world's reserve currency and largest source of uranium (source) into being a second tier power reduced to begging the United States to not destroy its economy (source) and to be allowed an independent nuclear deterrent (source). The United States has had a habit of strong arming its allies going all the way back to World War I and the British were naive in thinking that they could somehow steer it the way they wanted instead of recognizing that they were the ones being steered.
France might have been an empire in decline but it knew it didn't want to become entrapped in the gravity well of the Anglo-American system. It pursued its own strategic interests and independent foreign policy. France has its own independent nuclear infrastructure so it doesn't need to depend on anyone else for nuclear deterrence or energy (its one of the world's largest electricity exporters). It doesn't also doesn't have any foreign military bases on its soil. Its coherent industrial policy has allowed it to retain major heavy industries, including shipbuilding and an aerospace industry.
I really don’t think he’s been rude at all, I think he’s absolutely spot on, it’s an excellent analysis. France suffered from the effects of the war far worse than we did and West Germany was almost completely destroyed but even with political systems that could be rather unstable at times they both recovered far better than we did and they both have a more favourable relationship with the US. It would have been very hard for us to try to compete with the Americans in any field post-1945 (the potential to do that was wasted in 1939-41 by missing so many opportunities to noticeably shorten the war) but that didn’t necessarily mean that we had to take on the near-subservient role that we have. There are so many possibilities to kick on from 1945 to 1956, and largely due to incompetence we failed to take advantage of any of them, whereas France did, and by the time Macmillan took charge he’d been so shaken by Eisenhower’s Suez threats that he’d lost any vision of an independent future for Britain.