Perhaps the best example of this is Britain and France. Britain and France are separated by 23 miles of water. In France, egalité reigns supreme. Many places are union driven. The unions are all powerful. People aren't permitted to work more than 35 hours per week and get a large amount of holidays relative to their cousins 23 miles away.

Meanwhile, in the UK there's an opt out to allow people to work more than 40 hours a week, people get 25 days holiday on average and unions have little power in most cases, or act in ways that often damage peoples' jobs in others.

The differences between doing business in England and France are much more vast than the 23 miles that separate them. They're a product of France executing their aristocracy and the British not. A product of the French considering work 'travail' (toiling, or otherwise arduous activity) and the English not. And of course of the English being part of the industrial revolution early, meaning that the English could be more productive than everyone else with less resources, and of the French having to compete at a disadvantage. Add to that the other differences in French history and it's no wonder that many Brits (I wouldn't want to claim to speak for all as even we on a tiny island aren't a monoculture) generally feel closer to Anglophonic and former imperial countries than our European friends.

Please don't use English & British interchangeably.

Sorry for that. The reason I switched from British to English is because of the distance over the channel being 23 miles, not a suggestion that Britain is essentially England or that it's a monoculture. Please don't think otherwise.