Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

BonnieSituation

Lemming wrote: »

I got my first AZ jab yesterday and was told sometime around 11 weeks for the follow-up as I have to bring a card back with me for the second jab.



As an aside that is not relevant to this discussion, the vaccine is already knocking lumps out of me. Most of what they list as 'very common' and a couple of the 'uncommon' side effects I am or have experienced already. There is a category in between listed as 'common' that I seem to have skipped thus far.

As an aside to your aside, I have never felt as ill as I did last Monday. The worst flu I've ever had combined with every hangover in my life, all rolled into one. Awful. Thank God for paracetamol.

Back to politics, Ireland accepting "spare" doses (at considerably markup I fully expect) may play well to the domestic audience in the short term but it puts the country in a very precarious position with regards the rest of the member states if there are any more vaccine delivery issues within the bloc. I would expect any good will, support, and understanding regards the NI protocol will take a severe bruising. In short PM has it right above with his comments regards alturistic Tory governments; "Never trust a Tory" to make use of a well worn expression in England, anywhere north of the Watford Gap.

There's no way that I would accept anything from this Tory Govt, let alone non-existent vaccines. The playbook is obvious. I look forward to the Indo, Mícheal Martin and Miriam O'Callaghan falling for it this week.

Strazdas

BonnieSituation wrote: »

There's no way that I would accept anything from this Tory Govt, let alone non-existent vaccines. The playbook is obvious. I look forward to the Indo, Mícheal Martin and Miriam O'Callaghan falling for it this week.

I'm not so sure. The story has barely even registered in the media today : looks like a lot of people don't actually trust Johnson or the Tories.

BonnieSituation

Strazdas wrote: »

I'm not so sure. The story has barely even registered in the media today : looks like a lot of people don't actually trust Johnson or the Tories.

It's Sunday. It'll pick up throughout the week.

Someone will link the vaccine offer to our lockdown decision at cabinet on Tuesday and someone will ask a question of MM and he will answer it with all the panache skill that we have come to expect from him.

View

Shelga wrote: »

Oh please, why on earth would MM do this? The primary role of government is to look after the health and wellbeing of its own citizens, not showing solidarity with the EU.

Are you ok with more Irish people dying, so long as we can tell the EU we are good little boys? Completely agree we should meet our responsibilities under the Covax programme, but that's all.

Do people on this thread actually talk to anyone in the real world? Britain on 55% of its population having received first doses, we're on, what- 12%? I understand all of the reasons why the EU is further behind, and do not think we would have done any better on our own due to our small size, but the fact is they have failed, by any reasonable yardstick, compared to the UK and the USA.

Would you still want us to hand doses over to the EU, if they were offered by Biden and not Johnson?

It seems like everyone on this thread is just muttering darkly about how Britain will see, yes any day now, why our strategy is better. I'm not seeing it. And I couldn't be any more of a Remainer.

BIB - If MM was interested in this “primary role of government” “to look after the health and wellbeing of its own citizens,”, he’d have been enthusiastic about “showing solidarity with the EU” and would have backed the proposal for an export ban on vaccine from the EU to the U.K.

Instead, as we saw though, he was a vocal opponent of that idea.

Given that, even if the U.K. were to offer to fully vaccinate everyone here within a month, we’d have no option but to turn it down. We can’t go around acting as though we are a devolved region of the U.K. when it comes to getting vaccine supply, right after rushing to block a measure which would have ensured that vaccines that are being exported would instead be available for EU citizens.

In rugby terms, we are either on “Team EU” or “Team U.K.”, not on both, and we can’t be there “passing the ball” to the other team, just because they were “nice” when they were on “Team EU”.

BonnieSituation

View wrote: »

BIB - If MM was interested in this “primary role of government” “to look after the health and wellbeing of its own citizens,”, he’d have been enthusiastic about “showing solidarity with the EU” and would have backed the proposal for an export ban on vaccine from the EU to the U.K.

Instead, as we saw though, he was a vocal opponent of that idea.

Given that, even if the U.K. were to offer to fully vaccinate everyone here within a month, we’d have no option but to turn it down. We can’t go around acting as though we are a devolved region of the U.K. when it comes to getting vaccine supply, right after rushing to block a measure which would have ensured that vaccines that are being exported would instead be available for EU citizens.

In rugby terms, we are either on “Team EU” or “Team U.K.”, not on both, and we can’t be there “passing the ball” to the other team, just because they were “nice” when they were on “Team EU”.

That is a fantastic point about MM and his antics.

MrMusician18

View wrote: »

BIB - If MM was interested in this “primary role of government” “to look after the health and wellbeing of its own citizens,”, he’d have been enthusiastic about “showing solidarity with the EU” and would have backed the proposal for an export ban on vaccine from the EU to the U.K.

Instead, as we saw though, he was a vocal opponent of that idea.

Given that, even if the U.K. were to offer to fully vaccinate everyone here within a month, we’d have no option but to turn it down. We can’t go around acting as though we are a devolved region of the U.K. when it comes to getting vaccine supply, right after rushing to block a measure which would have ensured that vaccines that are being exported would instead be available for EU citizens.

In rugby terms, we are either on “Team EU” or “Team U.K.”, not on both, and we can’t be there “passing the ball” to the other team, just because they were “nice” when they were on “Team EU”.

While the UK is not exporting finished vaccines it is exporting essential components. An EU export ban would almost certainly see retaliation in the form of a reciprocal ban on video raw materials.

The end result is that no one gets vaccines. The UK has huge leverage over the EU regarding vaccines at this point and this is a situation that the commission has let develop this way.

NeuralNetwork

I think you also have to remember that a lot of these comments are coming from people who likely have a rather aggrandised notion of what the UK is producing and are diehard British nationalists. There's bene no official proposal just rumours and suggestions by people who aren't even in government.

I wouldn't necessarily say their overview of the supply chain is particularly objective.

BonnieSituation

MrMusician18 wrote: »

While the UK is not exporting finished vaccines it is exporting essential components. An EU export ban would almost certainly see retaliation in the form of a reciprocal ban on video raw materials.

The end result is that no one gets vaccines. The UK has huge leverage over the EU regarding vaccines at this point and this is a situation that the commission has let develop this way.

Well, this just isn't true.

BonnieSituation

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

I think you also have to remember that a lot of these comments are coming from people who likely have a rather aggrandised notion of what the UK is producing and are diehard British nationalists. There's bene no official proposal just rumours and suggestions by people who aren't even in government.

I wouldn't necessarily say their overview of the supply chain is particularly objective.

Given the foreign secretary didn't at one time realise that Dover was so important for connectivity to mainland Europe, I'm not counting on any of them being versed in the idiosyncrasies of supply chains.

MrMusician18

BonnieSituation wrote: »

Well, this just isn't true.

Well it is. If the UK didn't have leverage over the EU, the export ban would be in place - the leverage is the ability to collapse the supply chain for everyone. That said, if all the vaccine that has been exported to the UK was retained in the EU, we wouldn't be much further on anyway.

BonnieSituation

MrMusician18 wrote: »

Well it is. If the UK didn't have leverage over the EU, the export ban would be in place - the leverage is the ability to collapse the supply chain for everyone. That said, if all the vaccine that has been exported to the UK was retained in the EU, we wouldn't be much further on anyway.

Again, you're pre-supposing all this on the basis that there's leverage from the UK side. There isn't.

We're at a point where the UK got the jump on everyone by starting their vaccination programme over a month before everybody else in Europe. We're now at the crunch point where the UK are running out of stocks for second doses and this is why we are seeing the "lashing out" from their side.

It doesn't sound to me like they have any leverage at all.

Best they keep their 3.7m spare doses, as they're gonna need them.

yagan

MrMusician18 wrote: »

Well it is. If the UK didn't have leverage over the EU, the export ban would be in place - the leverage is the ability to collapse the supply chain for everyone. That said, if all the vaccine that has been exported to the UK was retained in the EU, we wouldn't be much further on anyway.

If that were true the EU would never have tabled export restrictions.

AstraZeneca got caught stockpiling doses after it had told the EU it would be delivering less and now it finally applied for certification for its Halix plant under the threat of further scrutiny.

Look at AstraZeneca's history, half a billion USD settlement in 2010 for fraudulent misselling in 2010, another $110 million settlement in Texas three years ago for the same fraudulent practices.

They've got form.

yagan

BonnieSituation wrote: »

Again, you're pre-supposing all this on the basis that there's leverage from the UK side. There isn't.

We're at a point where the UK got the jump on everyone by starting their vaccination programme over a month before everybody else in Europe. We're now at the crunch point where the UK are running out of stocks for second doses and this is why we are seeing the "lashing out" from their side.

It doesn't sound to me like they have any leverage at all.

Best they keep their 3.7m spare doses, as they're gonna need them.

Ironically in the long run it is us that may end up supplying the UK from our surplus.

Interestingly I was looking at Michigan's new wave and they've got a much higher full vaccination rate than the UK, 16% versus 4.5%. The only difference is they're essentially half open again and while their death rate isn't shooting up hospitalisations are. So the takeaway is that basing reopening on a declining death rate overlooks the vulnerability to the unvaccinated.

If the UK is serious about sticking with its reopening scheduling it could potentially end up with another hospitalisation peak and a lot more long covid sufferers.

Hospitalizations and ICU utilization is also increasing across the state, officials said, up 14% since last week, and this is the third consecutive week they have risen.
About 25% of the state’s population has been vaccinated, with 3.1 million vaccine doses administered. More than 16% of the population has received both doses.

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/michigan-covid-19-numbers-rates-similar-to-october-as-cases-continue-to-climb

Gerry T

What Van Der Leyen should do is say thanks for the 3.6m vaccines, we've taken them off our next shipment of (pfizer/moderna/az) to the UK from the EU and we'll distribute them to where we think in the EU needs them most. If MM had half a brain that would be his reply. Must sadly admit that hes useless, bring back V. Covney for next leader

View

MrMusician18 wrote: »

While the UK is not exporting finished vaccines it is exporting essential components. An EU export ban would almost certainly see retaliation in the form of a reciprocal ban on video raw materials.

The end result is that no one gets vaccines. The UK has huge leverage over the EU regarding vaccines at this point and this is a situation that the commission has let develop this way.

I think you’ll find that the U.K. does not have a monopoly on “essential components”. Were that the case they could hold vaccine supplies for every country on the planet to ransom and the vaccine supplies for all countries, not just EU ones, would be stuck waiting for them to finish their vaccination programme in full.

MrMusician18

MrMusician18 wrote: »

While the UK is not exporting finished vaccines it is exporting essential components. An EU export ban would almost certainly see retaliation in the form of a reciprocal ban on video raw materials.

The end result is that no one gets vaccines. The UK has huge leverage over the EU regarding vaccines at this point and this is a situation that the commission has let develop this way.

Just out of curiosity, what vital ingredient does the UK export that is required for vaccine production on mainland EU.

johnnyskeleton

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

I think you also have to remember that a lot of these comments are coming from people who likely have a rather aggrandised notion of what the UK is producing and are diehard British nationalists. There's bene no official proposal just rumours and suggestions by people who aren't even in government.

I wouldn't necessarily say their overview of the supply chain is particularly objective.

Exactly. The UK have our postal address, if they want to send us vaccines great. They know where we will be. We would love to receive them.

In reality, the UK enjoys talking about how generous they are going to be in the future, but it isn't anything to do with the real world. The Irish Times got wind of it and asked for official comment, which was along the lines of "The UK government has no surplus of vaccines at this time, so is not in a position to provide vaccines to other countries".

Irish Praetorian

Deleted User wrote: »

Just out of curiosity, what vital ingredient does the UK export that is required for vaccine production on mainland EU.

As I understand, the material referred to are 'Lipid Nanoparticles' used to transmit the mRNA or 'message' of the vaccine, to the human host.

Presently, they are sourced from Croda International, based in Yorkshire.

This FT article has a little more detail link.

Irish Praetorian

Irish Praetorian wrote: »

As I understand, the material referred to are 'Lipid Nanoparticles' used to transmit the mRNA or 'message' of the vaccine, to the human host.

Presently, they are sourced from Croda International, based in Yorkshire.

This FT article has a little more detail link.

According to other articles, (the FT one is paywalled) it is used in the production of the Pfizer vaccine, no mention of the AstraZeneca.
I don't think there are any Pfizer production facilities in the UK, so the hurt would be one way.

joeysoap

We’re expecting 1m doses of the vaccine in each of April, May, June.

If we can make use of those we will be doing ok

View

Irish Praetorian wrote: »

As I understand, the material referred to are 'Lipid Nanoparticles' used to transmit the mRNA or 'message' of the vaccine, to the human host.

Presently, they are sourced from Croda International, based in Yorkshire.

This FT article has a little more detail link.

Pfizer is a major multinational with plants all over the world. It is fairly unlikely that that single Croda International plant in Yorkshire supplies all of Pfizer’s plants worldwide.

MrMusician18

View wrote: »

Pfizer is a major multinational with plants all over the world. It is fairly unlikely that that single Croda International plant in Yorkshire supplies all of Pfizer’s plants worldwide.

That doesn't matter. At the moment the UK is producing raw/ingredients that do end up in our vaccines. The threat of a reciprocal blockade which damages supply chains is why the Irish government, along with others, did not back the commission's proposal for an export ban.

Peregrinus

The lunacy of this is that, if the UK were to impose an export ban on the material needed for the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, they would be cutting off their own supply of that vaccine.

Which highlights a point that pretty well everyone has known all along - competitive vaccine nationalism isn't so much a zero-sum game as a value-destroying exercise; it results in less vaccine all round.

What's the alternative? The alternative has to be co-operation to manage any shortfalls in supply.

This is an incredibly complex story but, cutting through, two things seem to emerge:

1. AstraZeneca overpromised. Whether through over-optimism, or failing to allow for contingencies, or whatever, they led their customers to expect, in aggregate, more doses of vaccine at earlier dates than AZ has, in the event, been able to deliver.

2. AstraZeneca entered into contractual commitments which would give the UK priority access, in the event of supply constraints, and then entered into contracts with the EU when the EU were unaware of that.

Bright students will recognize that I lay the bulk of the blame for this mess at the feet of AstraZeneca — mainly because I genuinely think that that's where it lies, but also because I think there's merit in an approach to the problem which seeks to avoid a blame-game between the EU and the UK. Not only is AZ not the UK and not the EU, it's not even a UK company or an EU company — it's a multinational, a merger between the Swedish Astra AB and Zeneca Group PLC, which was the pharmaceuticals arm of the UK's ICI.

The way forward here has to lie in co-operative management of supply shortfalls. If the EU and the UK both seek to grab what they can, or what they decide they are entitled to, both will end up with less; that's not a good outcome for either of them.

Seth Brundle

Moving back to Brexit, the Irish Times is reporting on a survey by the UK's Federation of Small Businesses which says that 23% of exporters have temporarily halted sales to EU customers and a further 4 per cent have decided to stop selling into the bloc permanently...

Many small UK exporters giving up on EU due to Brexit
Burden of red tape means that 25% of small UK exporters have halted sales

CelticRambler

Another small example of why the "Global Britain" benefits of Brexit are imaginary: one paragraph in a Guardian article about goods stuck in the Suez Canal:

Dave Hinton, owner of a timber company in north-west England, said he had a consignment of French oak stuck on a ship.

Why would French timber be going through the Suez Canal?

The oak had been sent from France for reprocessing into veneered flooring in China, and was on its way back to a customer in Britain, Hinton said.

Ohhhh ... well, I'm guessing that arrangement has been in place since long before Jan 1st 2021, so no Brexit benefit there. On the other hand, if he has any left over, Mr. Hinton can no longer sell that French oak to the French from his company in north-west England without it attracting tariffs, seeing as it has been substantially transformed outside of the UK.

(I'm guessing it makes economic sense to ship French timber to the far side of the world and back again because the Chinese can reprocess it without having to worry about things like labour laws, health-and-safety, or environmental protection? Could be a gap in the market, there, for Brexit Britain ... :rolleyes: )

View

MrMusician18 wrote: »

That doesn't matter. At the moment the UK is producing raw/ingredients that do end up in our vaccines. The threat of a reciprocal blockade which damages supply chains is why the Irish government, along with others, did not back the commission's proposal for an export ban.

On the contrary it does matter. Unless Croda International has a monopoly, its products can be replaced and the supposed “leverage” over the supply chain and the EU disappears.

As it is, Croda International has plants all over the world, including in the Netherlands and Belgium. It isn’t confined to manufacturing in a single plant in Yorkshire, so a U.K. ban may prove ineffective.

And, lastly, the blunt reality is that the “threat of a reciprocal blockade which damages supply chains” would force the various sides to the negotiating table.

At that point the solution is that increased supply of vaccine to the EU from the U.K. would cause the need for an export ban to disappear. The political pressure would then be on the U.K. government, to force AZ to actually supply the quantities of vaccine to the EU it promised.

Right now, the U.K. is engaging in vaccine nationalism and there is no reason for them to cease doing so while our Taoiseach goes around acting as though he is the U.K. ambassador to the EU hell bent on prioritising the smooth supply of vaccines to the U.K. rather than to Ireland and the rest of the EU.

ambro25

View wrote: »

(...)

Right now, the U.K. is engaging in vaccine nationalism and there is no reason for them to cease doing so while our Taoiseach goes around acting as though he is the U.K. ambassador to the EU hell bent on prioritising the smooth supply of vaccines to the U.K. rather than to Ireland and the rest of the EU.

Heh, now you can add financial nationalism to that:

The Bank of England is demanding that lenders seek its approval before relocating UK jobs or operations to the EU, after becoming concerned that European regulators are asking for more to move than is necessary for financial stability after Brexit.

Looks like someone in no.11 Downing Street finally copped on that the wheels are coming off UK plc. I didn’t think capital export controls would be coming in a mere trimester into Brexit.

ancapailldorcha

ambro25 wrote: »

Heh, now you can add financial nationalism to that:



Looks like someone in no.11 Downing Street finally copped on that the wheels are coming off UK plc. I didn’t think capital export controls would be coming in a mere trimester into Brexit.

How capable of following through with these demands is the Bank of England I wonder? It's not a stance that'll win it friends among financiers:

However, the BoE’s new stance has been criticised as regulatory “over-reach” by international bankers, who feel that they are caught between the politicised demands of the UK central bank and the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism.

CelticRambler

ambro25 wrote: »

Heh, now you can add financial nationalism to that:



Looks like someone in no.11 Downing Street finally copped on that the wheels are coming off UK plc. I didn’t think capital export controls would be coming in a mere trimester into Brexit.

So that's exit visas, by another name, for UK employees? Another tick on the Brexit -> Totalitarian Regime bingo card.

forgottenhills

ambro25 wrote: »

Heh, now you can add financial nationalism to that:



Looks like someone in no.11 Downing Street finally copped on that the wheels are coming off UK plc. I didn’t think capital export controls would be coming in a mere trimester into Brexit.

This is a sign of the current tit for tat sniping going on between the UK and EU over the financial services area and talks over equivalence. The report goes on to state that 7,600 jobs have left London for the EU, not a huge amount relatively speaking although the trading and subsequent taxes lost may be a different matter.

Interestingly what is not often reported is that approx 1000 EU financial services companies have applied to set up operations in the UK, suggesting that the death of London as a financial services center may have been greatly exaggerated.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56155531