There are many downsides to Brexit, but the vaccination programme isn’t one of them. The EU has done a poor job in this regard and if the U.K. were still in the EU, we wouldn’t be doing so well vaccinating people.
I think we need to be careful that we believe things that BJ says, the head of our approval agency said that as we were still in the transition period we actually used EU rules to approve the Pfizer and AZ vaccines and so Brexit did not make any difference to what we were allowed to do.
It was open to any other country in the EU to do exactly the same thing as we did it would not be against the rules and the EU would not be able to fine them or institute any other kind of punishment.
Now it is difficult to say if we had remained in the EU would we have gone out on our own when it comes to purchasing vaccines, I suspect because we have always been a slightly semi-detached member of the EU, we would have followed a twin track approach. We would have been part of the EU purchasing scheme but we might well have done some separate deals too.
Word is that many of the larger countries in the EU were on the point of doing their own deals and Ursula Von Der Leyen begged them not to go it alone as it could lead to the break up of the EU.
I agree with you though that the EU have not done a great job when it comes to the vaccines and the brexitiers have gained an easy win out of all this. People aren't going to look into the detail of it all they are just going to believe the brexitiers that its only because we have left the EU that we have done so well.
The entire brexit debate was not about detail and nuance it was all about emotion, sound bites and lies, this all works extremely well, just look how well Trump did for years. Almost every day I am hearing of small businesses having massive difficulties trying to come to terms with brexit. Hardly any of this is reported in the brexit supporting news papers.
