If you want a lesson in how not to run an economy, take the Eurostar

For the last five years, politicians of all shades have been banging on about how we should adopt this or that aspect of German economic policy. George Osborne argued in 2011: ‘We want to learn the lessons of the successful Mittelstand model, which has operated in Germany for many decades.’ Only a few weeks ago, Vince Cable argued: ‘Britain has not been as good as competitors like Germany in turning ideas into wealth creation.’

The German economy seems to be widely admired, despite lagging behind Britain’s for nearly a generation. It is true that Germany had a better post-crash period than the UK, but its financial sector was smaller and many of its problems were hidden from view. Germany was also benefiting from the Schroder reforms during the 2000s while Britain was suffering from the effects of Gordon Brown increasing government spending and regulation. If anything, Germany did a bit better in the 2000s because Germany copied Anglo-Saxon policies, and we did a bit worse because we were copying the failed continental policies.