38 Britain The EconomistAugust 29th 2020
“W
hy theGermans do it better”—the title of a new book by
John Kampfner, a respected journalist—speaks volumes
about the current state of the British psyche. The government is re-
placing Public Health England, the body that was supposed to stop
Britons from dying of covid-19, with a new outfit modelled on the
Robert Koch Institute, the body at the centre of Germany’s public-
health system. James Kirkup, head of the centrist Social Market
Foundation, says his aim is to “make Britain more like Germany”.
Other thinkers are less explicit, but pore over the details of Ger-
many’s technical-education system or social-insurance market.
That Britain should turn to Germany for ideas is not surprising
given the long, binding ties between the two states. Britain import-
ed its royal family from Hanover in 1714 and German-born Prince
Albert did as much as his wife to shape Victorian England. The idea
of the welfare state came from Bismarck. The post-war German
constitution was mostly the work of the British and Americans.
Competition combined with closeness means that Britain has a
long-standing weakness for “Germans do it better” arguments. Be-
fore the first world war advocates of national efficiency insisted
that Britain needed to invest more in science and education to es-
cape being crushed by the German chariot. From the 1960s, left-
wingers urged that Britain should learn from Germany’s model of
stakeholder capitalism.
Nevertheless, today’s surge of enthusiasm for the Teutonic
model is striking. It comes after a long period of Anglo-Saxon tri-
umphalism in which the British got into the habit of dismissing
the Germans as dinosaurs. “As economic growth stalls yet again,”
The Economistobserved in June 1999, “Germany is being branded
the sick man (or even the Japan) of Europe.” The spread of Germa-
nophilia to the right is new. It springs from Boris Johnson’s deter-
mination to spread prosperity throughout Britain’s regions and
improve technical education—issues on which Thatcherism has
little to offer but Germany has much to contribute.
This ideological change has coincided with a generational
shift. Margaret Thatcher’s Tories saw Germany as a problem to be
solved and the euas a German racket. Today’s Tory elite is more
likely to regard it as an example of high civilisation and social or-
der. Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, likes to visit Bay-reuth to listen to Wagner. Dominic Cummings is an enthusiastic
student of Bismarck. Even today’s top civil servants are infected.
Two recent appointees to top Whitehall jobs, Simon Case, perma-
nent secretary at Number 10, and Alex Chisholm, permanent sec-
retary at the Cabinet Office, are both Germanophiles.
Enthusiasm for Germany is also driven by profound cultural
anxiety. Britain gambled its future as a United Kingdom and a
member of the euon the results of two referendums—and, with
support for Scottish independence above 50%, the kingdom may
yet break up. The political system has been shaken by the rise of
the Brexiteer right and the Corbynite left as well as the downfall of
David Cameron and Theresa May in rapid succession. Mr John-
son’s government seems determined to set records in incompe-
tence. The covid-19 epidemic has heightened enthusiasm for a
country that has managed it far better than Britain. Germany has
lost fewer than 10,000 people to the disease compared with Brit-
ain’s toll of more than 40,000, and its economy suffered far less
damage as a result.Vive la Unterschied
Some argue that Britain has nothing to learn from Germany be-
cause the two are so different: Britain has a service economy (with
strengths in finance and the creative arts), whereas Germany has a
manufacturing one (with a messy financial sector and not much of
a creative one). This is nonsense: people and countries have more
to learn from those whose strengths are different from theirs. Ger-
man ideas have been successfully transplanted in the past: the
University of Warwick built one of the world’s best manufacturing
research centres by borrowing German methods for building ties
between universities and industry.
But Britain should proceed down the Teutonic path with cau-
tion. Its rose-tinted view of Germany tends to blind it to the coun-
try’s flaws. The left’s enthusiasm for “stakeholder capitalism” ig-
nores the corruption and collusion it has fostered. Germany’s
finance and service sectors are weak. The fashion for creating na-
tional champions by trying to merge companies (such as the failed
tie-up between Deutsche Bank with Commerzbank) is doomed.
And learning German lessons demands a seriousness that Brit-
ish politics lacks. Trying to copy the Robert Koch Institute is a good
example of its shallowness. Germany’s successful public-health
system is built on a deep, powerful layer of local government
which does not exist in Britain. The institute sits on top of, and
provides services to, local public-health departments. There is no
point in having the cherry without the cake.
Learning from another culture is difficult under any circum-
stances, but it is hard to think of a government that is less
equipped for a Teutonic transplant than the current one. Changing
cultures and institutions—to decentralise power, for instance, and
to raise the status of technical education—will require a degree of
patience, steadiness and co-operation which the people currently
in charge in Britain lack.
German politicians are notably dull. Mrs Merkel knows where-
of she speaks when she says that in government “you can’t solve
the tasks by charisma”. Mr Johnson relies on charisma, Mr Cum-
mings is more inclined to cudgel than co-operate, and the govern-
ment as a whole keeps u-turning all over the place in the most un-
German manner possible. Mr Gove and the Labour Party leader, Sir
Keir Starmer, are somewhat more Teutonic types. For its German
moment, Britain may have to wait until another prime minister
comes along. 7Bagehot Learning German
Whatever the question, the answer is Germany