WHY THE GERMANS DO IT BETTER NOTES FROM A GROWN-UP COUNTRY
JOHN KAMPFNER Atlantic, 312pp, £16.99
Kampfner, a half-british, halfSlovakian Jew with a High German surname, is a former editor of the New Statesman. He lauds post-wwii Germany as a success story, celebrated for its stability and prosperity, without giving ‘enough credit to enlightened American leadership’, considered Lionel Barber in the Spectator. What is more, Kampfner fails to acknowledge Germany’s ‘rotten corporate culture with its deep connections between management, workers and local politicians (and family ownership). This is the consensual system which Kampfner would presumably like to export to the UK, minus, of course, the corruption.’ Both the Wirecard and Volkswagen scandals ‘have exposed a cosy, insulated business culture hostile to anything which might challenge its most cherished habits or methods’.
Anne Mcelvoy, a former foreign correspondent in Germany, reviewed the book for the Observer. This ‘polemic’ treads ‘the line between curiosity and sententiousness. It taps smartly into the hunch that Germany has got a lot of things right that Britain has not, not least in the recent response to Covid-19.’ Yet ‘being grown up means responsibility in the wider world and here the record is chequered. The laggardly approach to raising defence spending... armed forces beset by interminable internal problems and a determination to plough on with the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project reflect a fragmented geopolitical outlook in Berlin. The price of the “grown up” – corporatism that powers the German economy – is also that a lot of dubious stuff gets swept under the carpet, as the saga of the car industry and the still unfolding emissions scandal shows.’