Britain | Bagehot

Whatever the question, the answer is Germany

Even the British right has got the Teutonic bug

“WHY THE Germans 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 replacing 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 Germany’s technical-education system or social-insurance market.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Learning German”

What Putin fears

From the August 29th 2020 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Britain

Stock price information displayed on a board at the London Stock Exchange.

Britain’s brokers are diversifying and becoming less British

London’s depleted stockmarket is forcing them to change

Sculpture by Charles Jencks of DNA double helix Cambridge University.

What a buzzy startup reveals about Britain’s biotech sector

Lots of clever scientists, not enough business nous


Illustration of Kier Starmer facing away next to the stripes of the Union Jack and the stars of the EU flag

Britain’s government lacks a clear Europe policy

It should be more ambitious over getting closer to the EU


The Rachel Reeves theory of growth

The chancellor says it’s her number-one priority. We ask her what that means for Britain