est assured that this is a column about politics, not football. Nevertheless the most resonant political insight of the week has come from Liverpool’s manager Jürgen Klopp, who has guided his team to the threshold of winning the Premier League. On the eve of the resumed 2019-20 football season, Liverpool’s German coach was asked last weekend whether he had ever worried about the dangers of the Covid-19 pandemic to the completion of the season. His answer was one to savour. “The problem I had,” replied Klopp, “was that I was getting the news from Germany as well as from England. I had no idea of the pandemic situation in Italy or France, but I do know exactly how it is in England and Germany, and an alien looking at it from outside would think we came from two different planets.” Klopp’s visiting alien will have been forced to stop and think this weekend after a surge of renewed coronavirus infections among workers in a North Rhine-Westphalia meat plant. But in the larger pandemic picture the difference between Planets Britain and Germany remains vast. Both are big and prosperous northern European countries, with Germany a bit bigger and a bit more prosperous. But that does not come close to explaining the gulf between the two countries’ overall performances in the face of Covid-19. By 23 June, according to official figures, Britain had sustained 306,210 confirmed cases of Covid-19, compared with Germany’s 190,862. In Britain 42,927 people had died from the virus. In Germany the figure on the same day stood at 8,895 deaths. In Britain, according to Johns Hopkins University data, the current death rate per 100,000 people stands at 64.27. In Germany, the rate is 10.73. It is a stunning difference. Germans have been six times less likely to die from Covid-19 than British people. What explains it? One underlying reason is that the UK’s health spending level per head of $4,000 is only approximately two-thirds that of Germany. Another more immediate one is that Germany was much quicker to lock down: most German schools closed from 13 March, a week before all parts of the UK; shops and restaurants closed from 16 March, again a week before Britain. As a result, Germany was able to begin lifting parts of its lockdown at the end of April. Most importantly of all, Germany was much better prepared. This was true both of the German state and of German industry. Germany had a manufacturing sector capable of making the medical equipment the country needed. Its health spending had risen in real terms for most years since the millennium. Contact tracing was also well developed across the German health system before the pandemic and was able to swing into action straightaway. Germany had many more intensive care beds too; 28,000, compared with Britain’s 4,000. Above all, German testing worked: while Britain abandoned mass testing in March, Germany conducted 160,000 tests a week that month, rising to 360,000 tests by mid-May. The contrast between the two countries was in most respects pitiful. Nor has Germany been a slouch in its pandemic economic policy either. The British Treasury’s prompt response, in the form of furloughing, business loans and tax holidays, has certainly been one of the UK government’s better pandemic performances. But Boris Johnson’s claim, which he again made on Tuesday, that no country in the world has done more to support its workforce during the pandemic, is false. Germany has had a more generous furloughing scheme than Britain’s in place for years, and it boosted support with other measures in March. In addition, Germany unveiled a further £116bn economic recovery package at the start of June. It is absolutely not part of this argument that Germany is perfect. The big post-lockdown surge in North Rhine-Westphalia last week – a region that had pressed hard and early to ease restrictions – is proof of that. Masks are now widely worn in Germany – more so than in Britain – but there was much dithering before it happened. Regions have taken different approaches. A tracing app took weeks to be launched (although there is one now). In the economy, foreign trade, always key to German prosperity, has taken a big hit. Germany’s recovery spending package is also a U-turn after the long years of piling up surpluses. Nevertheless, all of this poses a fundamental question. Why can’t Britain do things more like Germany? The question remains an absolutely crucial one. It affects not just the handling of Covid-19, massively important though that was and still is. It also affects many other vastly significant strategic challenges facing modern Britain too, especially in the aftermath of Brexit. These include the nature of Britain’s post-Brexit economic model, its social welfare system, its environmental approach, its governance, its values system and its international role. Johnson leads a government that is defined by the fact that it seeks “world-beating” nationally focused solutions to modern problems. That’s why it rejects the European Union. Yet the curious thing is that Johnson’s government also simultaneously rejects all the national models that have underpinned most politics and economic thinking in western Europe since 1945. It is just as scornful of suggestions it has anything to learn from Germany’s national success as it is of post-Brexit working with the EU. As a result it sets itself up to be world-trailing rather than world-beating. The result is that the British government has embarked on the pretence of a nationally focused policy rather than the reality. “Global Britain” is based on the nostalgia-driven fantasy that, by going it alone, Britain can again become a superpower, sitting at the top table, supplying high-end goods to itself and the world. But this is simply not going to happen. Or, rather, it would only happen in the way that China managed to do it over the past half-century – by copying best practice. Even then, Britain would be a big medium-sized player, not a global rainmaker. In the summer of 1908, David Lloyd George did what Rishi Sunak should also do as soon as he is able. He went to Germany to discover in detail how they did it. In Lloyd George’s case, the purpose was to find out about Germany’s social welfare system. This was to provide the underpinning of his thinking for what became the “people’s budget” of 1909. Britain’s welfare state – the lasting foundation stone of progressive politics in this country to this day – owes its origins to a government that was humble enough to learn from others. More than a century on, Johnson’s government lacks any equivalent understanding. If and when the pandemic is overcome, the most urgent lesson for Britain will be to grasp its need to learn seriously from others if we are to ensure improved national resilience against the inevitable next threat. That lesson applies with just as much, if not more, force in economics and politics. Many other nations get this. Modern Britain does not. Truly, and tragically, we inhabit a different planet.