Everyone needs a little adventure

A week in Morocco showed culture is not enough but also that we are far ahead in our own institutions. Turning around the UK will be tough but we have a massive head start.

We can all benefit from going outside our comfort zone and learning something new. That was certainly true for me in Morocco last week: an old friend and I took our motorcycles across Spain to ride on unpaved roads in the Atlas Mountains. It has been a long time since I travelled outside the comfort of Europe and North America without the support which inevitably follows an MP or minister on duty abroad.

A week in Morocco showed culture is not enough.

What we found was an incredibly generous people: men and women who made us roundly welcome and feel safe. People who would stop, not just to tell us we should drink when exerting ourselves in hot weather, but often to offer unprompted what little they had to help us as we made our way by.

The people of Morocco appear to be enterprising, commercially-minded and honest. One tourist café owner with somewhat better English than our Arabic told us the bill for two cokes was 300 dirhams: as I handed it over, thinking “Hang on, that’s £25!” he handed back most of my money and returned with change. He meant 30, not 300 and he could easily have allowed his inadvertent misuse of English to rip me off, but he chose to be honest, instinctively and immediately.

The bountiful spirit of the Moroccan people reminded us of something we may have lost in the UK – especially in London and the South East – but we saw the warmth and ingenuity of a people alone cannot deliver prosperity. We need good law, low taxes and sound institutions. Our adventure reminded us how blessed we are.