Even the British right has got the Teutonic bug
“WHY THE Germans get it done better” – the title of a new book by John Kampfner, a top journalist-speaks volumes about the current state of the British psyche. The government is replacing Public Health England, the body which was supposed to stop Britons from dying of covid-19, with a new outfit modelled on the Robert Koch Institute, your body in the middle of Germany's public-health system. James Kirkup, head of the centrist Social Market Foundation, says his aim would be to “make Britain a lot more like Germany”. Other thinkers are less explicit, but pore over the details of Germany's technical-education system or social-insurance market.
That Britain should use Germany for ideas is not surprising given the long, binding ties between the two states. Britain imported 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 originated from Bismarck. The post-war German constitution was mostly the job from the British and Americans.
Before ww 1 advocates of national efficiency insisted that Britain required to invest more in science and education to escape being crushed through the German chariot. In the 1960s, left-wingers urged that Britain should learn from Germany's model of stakeholder capitalism.
Nevertheless, today's rush of enthusiasm for that Teutonic model is striking. It comes after a any period of time of Anglo-Saxon triumphalism where the British experienced the habit of dismissing the Germans as dinosaurs. “As economic growth stalls all over again,” The Economist observed in June 1999, “Germany is being branded the sick man (or even the Japan) of Europe.” Multiplication of Germanophilia to the right is new. It springs from Boris Johnson's determination to spread prosperity throughout Britain's regions and improve technical education-issues 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 being an issue to become solved and also the EU like a German racket. Today's Tory elite is more likely to regard it as being a good example of high civilisation and social order. Michael Gove, your cabinet Office minister, loves to visit Bayreuth to hear Wagner. Dominic Cummings is definitely an enthusiastic student of Bismarck. Even today's top civil servants are infected.
Enthusiasm for Germany is also driven by profound cultural anxiety. Britain gambled its future like a Uk and a member of the EU around the outcomes of two referendums-and, with support for Scottish independence above 50%, the dominion may yet split up. The political system continues to be shaken by the rise of the Brexiteer right and the Corbynite left along with the downfall of David Cameron and Theresa May in rapid succession. Mr Johnson's government seems determined to set records in incompetence. The covid-19 epidemic has heightened enthusiasm for a country which has managed it much better than Britain. Germany has lost fewer than 10,000 people to the disease in contrast to Britain's toll in excess of 40,000, and its economy suffered far less damage as a result.
Some reason that Britain is not to understand from Germany since the two are so different: Britain has a service economy (with strengths in finance and the creative arts), whereas Germany has a manufacturing one (having a messy financial sector and not a creative one). This is nonsense: people and countries convey more to learn from those whose strengths are different from theirs. German ideas have been successfully transplanted previously: the University of Warwick built among the world's best manufacturing research centres by borrowing German means of building ties between universities and industry.
And learning German lessons demands a seriousness that British politics lacks. Attempting 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 municipality which does not exist in Britain. The institute sits along with, and offers services to, local public-health departments. There is no reason for having the cherry without the cake.
Learning from another culture is tough under any circumstances, but it is difficult to think of a government that's less equipped for any Teutonic transplant than the current one. Changing cultures and institutions-to decentralise power, for example, and to enhance the status of technical education-will need a amount of patience, steadiness and co-operation that the people currently in control in Britain lack.
German politicians are notably dull. Angela Merkel knows whereof she speaks when she states that in government “you can't solve the duties by charisma”. Mr Johnson relies on charisma, Mr Cummings is much more inclined to cudgel than co-operate, and also the government as a whole keeps U-turning everywhere within the most un-German manner possible. Mr Gove and also the Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, are somewhat more Teutonic types. Because of its German moment, Britain may have to wait until another prime minister comes along.
From The Economist, published under licence. The initial article in English are available on www.economist.com
