I suspect there was a lot of frustration over the changes that France made. But rmember they had a week or so longer and started to include that data when they had enough of it, as we have done now!
It was always unlikely that any one nation, with broadly similar populations, taking broadly similar steps, would have dissimilar numbers.
i wanted to know where these extras were then added into the gov daily update totals - people were telling me they were added in - where? When? I could not see this. The ONS data was always being used by the various anayiss teams. It was always published publicly. It just wasn't the measure being used daily to track/compare the infection rate, broadly in line with other countries.
That measure was one of convenience, never intended to be the only measure. That's another thing I dislike some journalistic reactions for. Instead of them doing the obvious and explaining the ONS data they either chose to or really did not understand what was happening and then embarked on another witch hunt. Had they actually done any journalism, let their own science leads do the work, they could have outlined the real data themselves, been part of a real time information feed. But most of them chose not to!
I mean, they only have one job... and many are choosing a weird avenues of investigation, if they want to be seen as serious journalists! You only have to listen to the ones who have been doing a proper job, hear the questions they ask, to work that out!