Has Germany lost its shine? Larry Elliott thinks so

There’s an old school of thought, particularly in the British Centre that had a lot of time for Germany and its post-war economic miracle. Exponents as diverse as Will Hutton and Corelli Barnett pointed to its world-class education system (particularly in technical subjects), its Mittelstand of SMEs and their associated financial arrangements, and of course its superior industrial relations. Certainly it was performing far ahead of the UK for many decades. Yet, like its football team, this former world-beater is losing its schwerpunkt. It’s not just the disastrous election results in the formerly Communist east, or the disastrous dependence on Russian energy. According to Larry Elliott of the Guardian (whom we have sometimes channelled before on these pages), the problems go much, much deeper.

Too much cultural capital has been invested in engineering, he asseverates. Names like Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes were once synonymous with economic excellence. But now Germany is too embedded in the era when those names ruled the worlds’ highways, while other nations have moved on. It’s all a bit like Edwardian Britain, which remained emotionally committed to the world of coal mines and cotton spinning, while the real action was already moving elsewhere

Will Germany enter a nosedive and lose all? The world remembers the consequences of the last time that happened and too many sensible people, both at home and abroad have already reacted to the siren call of AfD and its chums. Once great nations can transition to a more humble prosperity (the UK, France and Japan are examples here) and there is every reason to think that in the long run, Germany can do the same. But the real message for us all comes from the popular musical singing group Fleetwood Mac, heavily deployed by the Clinton campaign in 1992; Don’t stop Thinking about tomorrow

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/01/germany-economy-problem-analogue-industries

#Will Hutton #Corelli Barnett #Germany #digital #AI #manufacture #mittelstand