Britain must help Europe fight a third wave

During the referendum campaign five years ago, the pro-Brexit side argued that by freeing ourselves from the EU’s native protectionism and over-application of the precautionary principle, Britain could revitalise its economy and democracy. The EU wanted to seize more power, they argued, by taking control of ever greater areas of public life. Remainers thought these fears were exaggerated. They saw in the Leave vote an eruption of nativism.

The EU’s vaccine war, however, could not have better demonstrated the problem of Brussels overreach. While the vaccine programme rolls on in Britain, with more than half of all adults now inoculated, the EU is being drawn ever further down a blind alley of its own making. The European Commission’s threat to ban the export of vaccines to third countries — a move for which it has already granted itself the required powers — has exposed a way of thinking which not only puts lives at risk all across Europe, but also promises to damage inward investment.

It would be very easy for the UK government to succumb to those saying that Britain must respond in kind. The Pfizer vaccine, for example, requires lipids that are manufactured in Yorkshire. The Prime Minister could say to Ursula von der Leyen that if the EU dares to cut off supplies of the finished vaccine, Britain will block the export of the raw materials. The result would be that both sides would diminish their vaccine supply. Von der Leyen may even want Boris Johnson to issue this warning, in order to give her the excuse of provocation.

It is a temptation Johnson should resist. There is nothing to be gained from threatening to jeopardise vaccine production. It would be the equivalent of mutually assured destruction during the Cold War.