Why the World Does It Better

My journeys in search of good things around the globe

The Odyssey Begins

Finally, I’m here in Substack-land (three years after originally signing up), although I could be writing this from anywhere. To coin Theresa May’s wonderful phrase, I am proud to be a citizen of nowhere, although I’d rather call myself a citizen of everywhere.

Over the next six months I’ll be travelling the world for my next book, to focus on countries (often smaller and unsung) that are dealing with one of the world’s problems in a way that we should emulate. The title of the book (a play on my previous one) is also the title of this Substack. I’ve already been to Vienna to look at public housing, to Estonia to see how they deal with cyber-security and E-government, and to Finland for its education system. Shortly I’m off to Canada (immigration) and Costa Rica (biodiversity). In June I’ll be in Taiwan to look at its health service, but it would be remiss of me not to write about the China-threat.

Part of the reason for these trips, and for this new book, is to redress the dystopian predictions of the future (you could call it therapy as I’ve always had a half-empty view of politics). Most of all, it’s about learning. I’m keen to understand how countries deal with problems and crises and I’ve always believed that one of the weaknesses of Britain is its mix of hubris and insularity. We are not alone in that, but we are particularly myopic and monolingual, taking the US and Australia as our primary (and only) cultural and public-policy reference points.

As you are one of the pioneers, reading my musings on this platform for the first time, you’ll probably know me from my last half dozen or so years writing about Germany. I was hardly the only Brit to flee (physically and metaphorically) from the ‘island’ (as the Germans now call it) in response to Brexit. There are apparently around 40,000 ‘Brefugees’ in Berlin alone, although perhaps understandably the (otherwise excellent) British Embassy in the German capital doesn’t count them.

The German word for commuting is ‘pendeln’, and I have been a ‘Pendler’ since 2018, writing for various publications, and researching my last two books, and meeting a new world of Berliners - journos, politicians and diplomats, but also architects, historians, archaeologists, activists and people who care deeply about the world (and know a good time too).

I’m incessantly asked to recant for my thesis in ‘Why the Germans Do It Better’ (one national newspaper offered me a lucrative amount of money and copious space for such a mea culpa) but I won’t succumb to such kind blandishments. There will be much scope here for me to talk about the incessant failings of Olaf Scholz, about Germany tortuous confusion over Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Gaza (I just wrote about that in the Guardian), and how the trains most definitely don’t run on time. Ultimately, though, I continue to be reassured by a country that takes its politics seriously rather than, ahem, others that treat it as a bit of fun. (As one German friend once told me ‘I’ve given up my Netflix subscription because I get all the entertainment that I need watching the British parliament’. That was, admittedly, in the era of Clown Johnson).

Even when things were going well (compared to the UK at least), most Germans were bewildered, shocked, by the thesis of the book. ‘How could you possibly have written that?’ asked the interviewer on the morning programme on Deutschlandfunk, Germany’s equivalent of Today. My stock response is to say that a more accurate title might have been ‘Why the Germans do many things better much of the time’, but that’s not quite the marketeer’s dream. German journalists were secretly titillated by the fact that British readers bought it, and reviewers seemed to like it. Not all, particularly those of a traditional Conservative disposition. My favourite line came from the inestimable Simon Heffer in my old paper, the Daily Telegraph, who called it ‘Brexit revenge porn’. I wanted that on the strap of the paperback version, but my then editor, somewhat cautiously, demurred. It was a great review, teaching me so much about the mindset of Britons clinging desperately to past glories.

In any case, ‘Why the Germans’ was not, despite its title, a polemic. It was rather an exhortation to my newly adopted country to address its weakness and appreciate - and act upon - its strengths. And no more than in foreign policy. Germany is struggling to adopt hard power for good ends.

In this Substack, I’ll also provide a regular and personal take on German politics, and on life in Berlin, a city where the relationship between the present and past plays on me incessantly and led me to write my more recent book, ‘In Search of Berlin’. I’ve been touched by the very personal letters I’ve received from Germans, Brits and others with their own Berlin tales. When I was asked by Der Spiegel to describe the city as if it were a person, I proffered the following: ‘intelligent, inquisitive, attractive, excitable, neurotic - someone who goes to therapy once a week’.

This city that has been a trading post, military barracks, a centre of science and learning, industrial powerhouse, hotbed of self-indulgence and sex, and control centre for the worst experiment in horror known to man continues to draw me back. So much so that from September I’ll be there full-time, for a year at least, and I’ll explore the many contradictions and idiosyncrasies of the place.

Before then, it’ll be a mixture of Germania and miscellany from around the world, political, cultural, societal, providing what I hope will be insights into how others do things we might wish to emulate. What better message for an incoming British government, trying to revive a country so ill at ease?

I hope you’ll find these writings interesting. Please spread the word and please get in touch with any/all thoughts, either via www.jkampfner.net or email me john@jkampfner.net.

Time to pack my bag (again).