Britain's pride in its past is not matched by any vision for its future | Timothy Garton Ash

There have been times over the last few weeks when it has felt as if we were living through a looped replay of Dad’s Army

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? The Covid-19 crisis is a mirror held up to each nation. Some, such as Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand, look very good indeed. Many have celebrated an unfamiliar unity, solidarity and selflessness, praising as distinctively Spanish, Italian or Danish the very same qualities that just across the frontier are being lauded as Portuguese, French or Swedish. Others, such as the United States and Poland, are tragically revealed as incapable of achieving national solidarity even when faced with such an external threat. Instead they appear more politically polarised than ever, like a man whose right arm is fully engaged in wrestling with his own left arm while a tiger mauls his back.

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