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UK 1 EU Zero
You have to give it to Boris. Part of his gasp as he planned his way to Downing Street was that he vowed to pull the UK out of the EU and set sail for the sunny highlands. When Covid-19 hit like an earthquake, his administration messed up their strategy, resulting in the UK having some of the highest infection and death rates in the world.
But then, when he was stuck in deep compost, he saw a space and went for it. As a result of their bet, the UK is currently world champion in vaccination, leaving the EU in the shadows. The Boris team has already injected more than three times the population of the Republic of Ireland.
The GB numbers exceed 15 million million punctured and galloping. The equivalent Irish figure is 200,000.
In Northern Ireland, around 20% of citizens have already received their first injection. Across the border, the equivalent figure is between 3% and 4%.
Remember December? When did the southern eyebrows rise on infection rates and behavior at the border?
It’s England’s biggest morale boost since the 1966 World Cup final victory over Germany. In fact, the current mood in Bobby Moore-Uwe Seeler’s homeland is so, so different.
Last year, Ursula von der Leyen, the one chosen by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, was named as President of the European Commission. When the pandemic began to spread fear and chaos around the world, he courageously took on the role of coordinating the EU’s response to the challenge.
The exit of the United Kingdom from the Brussels club was complicated and Boris left on bad terms. But in the final months of the divorce negotiations, when Covid-19 was stretching the UK’s national health service to its foundations, Boris somehow crafted a winner-take-all strategy for the acquisition. of the vaccine.
The first miracle formula was discovered by Turkish émigré scientists, working in Germany, who partnered with the Pfizer company. But the British got the first call.
Boris and his friends actively supported the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, in its collaboration with the University of Oxford. They pre-reserved access to any successful formula I could produce.
A French-owned pharmaceutical company has a plant in Livingston, Scotland, and a deal was struck there, too.
To complete the magic equation, the British energized and focused on rapid follow-up regulatory scrutiny through their own post-Brexit ‘us alone’ system for any potential brew that hits the market.
So while the EU worked to coordinate contact with its 27 member states and the EU regulatory system proceeded with more caution than its UK counterparts, Boris had his supplies, permission to use them and a system to distribute them.
Germans watch sadly from the confinement as a home-developed vaccine is distributed in the UK. They have elections later this year.
In France, Marine Le Pen is chasing Emmanuel Macron at the polls for next year’s presidential election showdown. He is suffering from the slow role of the vaccine, in contrast to what is happening in the Canal.
Encouraged by the Tory Press headline writers, Boris searches the messy Downing Street closet for his Superman costume.
Israel (population 9 million) is one of the few countries to keep up with the Boris Johnson success story.
Irish citizens, take note of Irish voices and Irish experts speaking at the top levels in the UK’s pioneering vaccine development and delivery system.
And, in this post-Brexit world, it’s worth remembering that the first citizen on the planet to receive a government-approved injection of the German-created Prizer vaccine was 91-year-old Margaret Keenan.
She is a former Coventry-based jewelry store assistant, born into a nationalist household in the border town of Belcoo, Co Fermanagh, over the bridge from Nevan Maguire’s famous restaurant.
Some possible complications
My late mother had a mischievous sense of humor. She used to say that God rarely opens one door without closing another. Boris would have to be very careful. The cunning plan is working wonders. A moment to be more alert.
Over the weekend, his health minister Matt Hancock seemed almost convincing. Even foreigner
Secretary Dominic Raab deserves “enhanced” status.
But a dizzying group of Tory MPs threatens to lose the plot with 60 or more of them pushing for a swift end to the shutdown, now that the vaccine launch is going so well.
They are demanding reopening dates not only for schools and stores, they also want commitments on pubs and restaurants.
In a memory lapse that defies logic, they are calling for a repeat of the “eating out to help” scheme funded by the government last year.
Last week, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak confirmed that the economy contracted 9.9% last year. (Isn’t it helpful if the slide stops one step before the double digits, 10%)?
The reduction indicates the magnitude of the challenge facing the prime minister and the chancellor that could one day succeed them.
In the depths of the pandemic gloom, the Chancellor added a £ 20 surcharge to what’s known as the ‘universal credit’ payment system, offered to six million citizens who are out of work or on low pay.
The basic level of payment starts at around £ 340 per month for singles under 25.
It was supposed to be a temporary excavation, which would be completed next month. Mandarins who know that ‘quantitative easing’ (print your own money), eventually comes back to bite it, are warning the Chancellor that temporary must mean temporary.
But Sunak and his prime minister know that in a land where food banks are part of the new normal, it could be a risky strategy to antagonize the poor and those struggling in the midst of a pandemic.
Boris appeared on American television over the weekend. CBS’s Face The Nation host Margaret Brennan told him that in 2019 now-president Joe Biden had described him as the physical and emotional clone of Donald Trump.
The interviewer asked the prime minister if he was concerned that he and President Biden were getting off on the wrong foot.
“I think I have had two long and very good conversations with the president,” Boris said.
“We had a really good exchange, particularly on climate change.”
Then the question of Northern Ireland was raised. The exchange deserves scrutiny
Margaret Brennan: … President Biden does not want that peace deal in Northern Ireland jeopardized, he has made it clear that the border must remain open and he must adhere to that EU-UK deal from December. Can you commit and assure the Congress of the United States and the President of the United States that you will do so in all circumstances and that you will adhere to that agreement?
Boris Johnson: You gamble. This is fundamental to us, the – the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Peace Agreement, the Good Friday process, the Belfast Agreement, these – these agreements are absolutely crucial –
Margaret Brennan: And the Northern Ireland Protocol?
Boris Johnson: – for our continued stability – our continued stability and – and – and success as – as the UK – and I have a great relationship with – with – with – with Dublin, with Michael Martin, the Irish Taoiseach. And we are going to work together to do great things and, MARGARET, have no doubt that we do not want to do anything that would jeopardize the achievements of the Northern Ireland peace process. It is absolutely vital.
Margaret Brennan: And the Northern Ireland Protocol in particular? Will you adhere to that open border?
Boris Johnson: We want to make sure there is free movement, north south, free movement east-east-west and, and we guarantee the rights of the people of Northern Ireland, of course.
Will Boris abandon the Northern Ireland Protocol?
How will those comments from the prime minister act on Cullybackey? How are they going to fall for Mervyn Gibson, the Grand Secretary of the Orange Order, who immediately after the Brexit deal was finalized last December, described Johnson as a lousy trade unionist who had betrayed Northern Ireland?
How will they be assimilated by Peter Robinson, former leader of the DUP and former prime minister of NI, and David Campbell OBE, former chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party?
The two are currently board members of Co-Operation Ireland.
In recent days, your contributions have added significantly to the narrative about union discontent over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Some of the most excited voices in trade unionism argue that if the EU cannot be persuaded to abandon the Northern Ireland Protocol, then Boris should make his concern known by activating the Article 16 Mechanism.
In his Belfast News Letter column, Peter Robinson said that trade unionists may have to decide whether removing the protocol is more important than the continuation of the Stormont Assembly.
In this pressurized environment, how is Boris likely to behave? Is Northern Ireland a more pressing problem than Scotland, where Assembly elections will take place in May and where Nicola Sturgeon is hell-bent on creating an EU land border between England and Scotland one day?
Could a coalition of the ERG group, the ‘We’ve had enough of Brexit’ group of conservative supporters, and the DUP MPs cause the Prime Minister so much pain that he could take unilateral action on the Northern Ireland Protocol?
Or will transatlantic relations and other priorities push you to conclude that the limited time available, for now, should be to try and tackle the sharp edges of the Brexit deal?
At the beginning of the year, Boris was in a deep hole. He was faced with some of the highest Covid infection rates and mortality statistics in the world and a British variant of the disease that spreads like wildfire.
The vaccine strategy has become his “get out of jail” card.
Based on Boris’ past behavior, his focus for the immediate future will be where he is winning. Part of his personality is his ability to find a place in a Titanic lifeboat while others battle in the icy water.
In the post-Brexit world, Boris, the survivor, enjoys the UK’s run as world champion in vaccination.
The rise of the pound sterling is not alien.
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