Dhe amazement at what is happening in the kingdom is great, and not only abroad. After just 44 days in office, the fourth prime minister in six years falls in a stunning political reversal – only to be replaced by his own predecessor, who in turn had failed miserably. Has Britain become the new Italy, where chaos has long been part of everyday political life and where the head of government has changed every 14 months on average? Or has something specifically British gotten out of hand? Does the Westminster system tend towards political dramas and riots more than other models of government? Is it harder, nefarious? Or, on the contrary, more playful? careless? Do the British simply have more sense for entertainment?
The British system is difficult to explain and there are few who happily defend it. For the sake of fairness, it should nevertheless be noted that the content of the somersault is not an island specialty. Even in cautious Berlin, positions that have just been announced are cleared away overnight. After the accident in Fukushima, the government canceled the agreed lifetime extension and radically bid farewell to nuclear energy. And there were only two weeks between Angela Merkel’s statement that “we can’t do it if we say now you can all come” and her sentence: “We can do it.” Both decisions marked a sharp about-face and were made public admired.
A sporty approach to politics
What sets the British apart from other Western nations is the regularity with which abrupt policy changes are made. A fresh government is almost expected to try something new. On the one hand, this is due to the first-past-the-post system, which has accustomed citizens to the fact that usually only one party is in power, which then disappears back into the opposition after a while. A new Prime Minister is given the right not only to set priorities and gradually develop politics, but also to experiment with completely new approaches. If they fail, the government is simply voted out. What is new is that the right to reverse course was claimed by a prime minister who was not the result of a general election but of a sort of member poll. One of the roots of their early end lies in this weak mandate.
From Germany’s point of view, where policy changes are agreed and written down over weeks in coalition negotiations, it seems strange that legislative initiatives like those on the market square are announced or called off. The Prime Minister’s annual party conference speech, for example, is considered a failure if he doesn’t pull at least a few parliamentary projects out of a hat or withdraw them (“So I can announce today . . .”) References to the election program, which also exists in Great Britain, are made often constructed.
The more athletic approach to politics has a lot to do with the experience that national history has taken a number of wrong turns, but never ended in the abyss. This distinguishes the political culture of Great Britain from that of Germany, which is still shaped by the trauma that politics can lead to barbarism. In Germany, there is more fear of making the wrong decision with serious consequences. However, even before the 20th century, the German way of doing politics was more serious and sober than the English way. As early as 1827, Heinrich Heine distinguished the politicians on the island from their German colleagues with her “unbiased wit”: “In the most serious debates, where the lives of thousands and the salvation of entire countries are at stake, none of them come up with the idea Idea to cut a rigid German estate face”.
