Isn’t it a strange paradox. The British have made very few quality products. Ever.
British Cars and motorcycles are notoriously unreliable. (Being polite).
Germans, Austrians and Italians on the other hand. All make quality products in a dozen different categories.
But for some reason British rifles are more valuable. Are they better made? Very doubtful, with their manufacturing history. They even used German actions on their best rifles.
Is it that wealthy Brits that brought Birmingham rifles to Africa? And now that is what is considered stylish?
I think that's a little unfair really.
Most countries have a sweeping reputation for quality of manufacture, usually based on the products people interact with regularly at the time they form their opinions.
People's opinions on Japanese cars for instance vary from cheap crap to extremely good quality, depending usually on if the first one they experienced was in the 60s or the 2000s. We'll see the same thing with S Korean brands in the next 20 years, and probably a similar shift in the opinion of Indian brands in the next 100.
Britain, as with most countries, has goods they are good at in recent times, and goods that they are bad at in recent times. Cars and bikes, they're bad at, at least since the 50s onward.
Unfortunately, those are also one of the major British branded exports, or have been in the past 70 years and so are the poster children for 'British Manufacturing'. The fact that a Rolls Royce is extremely well made, or a Purdey, or a British built jet engine or an Airbus wing or a ship out of a BAE facility is a little irrelevant, because people don't interact with them in the context of it being a 'British manufactured' thing. They interact with Land Rovers that break down and fall apart.
However, if one looks at say Italy on the same basis of their mass market cars in the same period, then it's hard to argue that they make 'quality products'. Fiat and Alfa Romeo, the last word in reliability and quality, am I right?
But Italy is lucky in that in the modern era they are known for goods that they are good at; clothes, food, wine, art, very premium luxury goods. So their stereotype is 'good quality', at least in markets like the US where their mass market cars aren't sold much (the opinion is rather different in Europe, let me tell you!)
So that's my defense of British manufacturing. National stereotypes are both sweeping generalizations and stereotypes usually formed through a few interactions with a few popular or well known products from that country.
They are highly unlikely to be true for every good from a certain place so we shouldn't judge the quality or value of a specific offering based on where it comes from. Unless of course we can judge the quality of all American manufactured goods on the basis of Apple, Coca-Cola, Ford, McDonald’s, Microsoft and Nike, America's most well known global products...
It's also worth considering that Swiss watches were the lower quality, mass produced 'budget' option for people who couldn't afford to buy British or German or French as little as 200 years ago. How times have changed...
As for if a London best gun is really any better made than a Best gun made elsewhere? Probably not. Both will be made to the highest possible standards within a company that really really cares about quality. If that company is based in London or Ferlach or Liege or even Nankoku is irrelevant if the company culture is the same. London just has a cool history and a stronger brand, which makes them more desirable.
