Don’t Mention the Vaccine

John Kampfner | 22nd April 2021 | Uncategorised

Why bragging about our jab success will win Britain neither friends nor influence in Germany

During the first referendum on Europe in 1975, those campaigning to leave likened the Treaty of Accession to Chamberlain’s Munich Agreement and appeasement. The year before, as he was preparing to address the Labour Party conference, the West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt asked his cabinet what he might say in his speech that would help convince voters to stay in the EEC. One of his ministers, who had just met her British counterpart, Barbara Castle, told him: “The only way to keep Britain in the European Community is not to remind it that it is already in.” This memo formed part of an exhibition at the German House of History in Bonn in 2019 entitled “Very British: A German Point of View”. This was one of the museum’s most popular shows. It had been devised before the referendum, but its contents were amended to include a room focused on Brexit. Hoffman admitted Germans’ fixation with Britain’s travails had boosted visitor numbers. Germans have devoured British subculture, pop musi...

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