Germany is right to extend its furlough scheme. Why won't Britain do the same?

The Kurzarbeit programme, in which the government provides workers whose hours have been reduced with a minimum of 60% of their lost pay, has been credited by many with softening the economic blow of the pandemic. Shekhar Aiyar, the IMF’s mission chief for Germany, praised the programme lavishly in an interview, claiming that Germany, by expanding the scope of the scheme and making it more flexible, “is doing precisely what should be done in deep recessions”. Dominic Rushe attributes a substantial portion of the difference between the US unemployment crisis and Germany’s moderate bump in jobless numbers to Kurzarbeit, while the Economist claims that for many experts, “the model for a Covid-19 furlough scheme has been Germany’s”.