Re: It's a tradition...
Lars,
I don't think there's anything unusual about various British people making comments on how Britain compares to other countries. And this being the internet, many of those will be innaccurate.
If you'd read my post, you'd have noticed that I gave my sources, which were the IMF, World Bank and UN. I was lazy and just picked the Wikipedia link at the top of Google - though I'd already seen the figures at some point and so knew they were broadly correct.
However I did just pick straight 2016 GDP in dollars. Which figures you use, depends on what you want to compare - or what political point you want to make.
So you picked PPP, which showed that France hadn't surpassed the UK - but then said it was expected to. Still not backing up your claim though, which was that it had already happened.
So I've done a better search and can give you a World Bank linky.
My original comment was only to correct an error, probably because it's become a Brexit talking point to claim that this cause the UK economy to instantly become smaller than France's - due to exchange rate fluctuations. Which isn't actually true.
India will be passing both the UK and France soon enough hopefully, given the size of their population. Although obviously China and India are way up the table on size of population, but a long way from catching up on GDP per capita.
The UK and France will compared to nauseating extent over the next few years, being similar sized, neighbouring economies, with similar populations who are about to take an interestingly diverging path due to Brexit.
France has suffered comparitively to the UK in the last 15-20 years - much of which I suspect is down to having joined the Euro. Though both countries have their own specific economic and social problems.
For example France has much better productivity than the UK, but at the same time has had and seems willing to tolerate much higher levels of unemployment - which are interlinked. Which all makes grist for the mill of economic comparisons. And people do rather pick their stats to support their pre-existing opinions.
One thing I can agree with you on is that there is a tradition in the UK of speaking rubbish about France. Being rude about the french is an ancient custom, which we seem unlikely to be changing in the next few years...