Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

Enzokk

I don't believe this keeps cropping up every few months. Brexit is a loser for Labour. That is all that needs to be said to explain why Starmer didn't mention it.

schmoo2k

Leroy42 wrote: »

It's all on Covid, except when it needs something to divert from Covid and then it's straight back to Brexit.

The Tories never shut up about Brexit. Why do Labour feel the need to be quiet when the Tories are out every day talking about it?

They don't need to even mention the EU. The deal is done. Now its time to attack the signatories of that deal. Johsnon and Frost with a massive helping for Gove.

Why did they abandon the fishermen? What are they going to do to support artists? The fashion industry? Where are the new jobs going to come from?

Its not about fighting about Brexit, its about fighting for the future of UK. Where are they great opportunities they keep talking about? Why did they not publish the economic impact of the deal? What are they going to do about NI? Have they a plan for the possibility of shortages of nurses due to lack of FoM? What will yound people do instead of summer jobs in Europe? What is the plan for food standards.

These are things that should be easy to answer after 5 years, and yet the government clearly have no plans. Any functioning opposition should be hammering them.

Everyday, every PMQT, another question, another dig, another chance to show up the government.

They seem to have given up the whole point of opposition. Shoe on the other foot there is no way the Tories would simply accept the situation and agree not to mention it.

But if they do that for the next 4+ years, folks will get tired of it - makes sense to wait for Covid to blow over and then tackle Brexit properly, their only real play is to openly support rejoining the single market / customs area and that won't fly right now.

schmoo2k

tubercolossus wrote: »

Fixed that for you. They can't re-open their economy when the job is only half-done. Even Ireland is ahead of the UK on the percentage of people fully-vaccinated.

To be fair the research has said up to 12 weeks for second vaccination will be fine.

But its not the real reason they are ahead - the real reason is that they ordered 350 million doses for a population of 60 odd million, so effectively backed every horse...

The worst thing about Brexit is that we listen to the UK press - and its anti EU bashing is annoying, if we only spoke Irish (or French or Spanish) then it wouldn't have the same impact...

Strazdas

tubercolossus wrote: »

I'm enjoying this "Britain's progress post-Brexit will be followed VERY CLOSELY by all the wavering EU states who are THIS CLOSE to upping sticks and leaving as well" narrative. If the last four years and a bit have been good for anything it's been to scare the bejeezus out of any EU state thinking about leaving. Brexit has been a highly potent argument for staying in the EU.

The Brexiteers have an 'all or nothing' mindset in relation to the EU. You're either a full member or you try and smash the relationship to pieces and leave forever.

They're definitely extremists - they don't do compromise or a halfway house of seeking reforms. Goodness knows what they would be like in a marriage : telling their wife or husband : 'Either give in to all my demands or I'll file for divorce tonight'.

Strazdas

Strazdas wrote: »

Not for long though. It's anticipated that there will be a massive acceleration in EU vaccinations in the next 2-3 months, so much so that some EU states think they will overtake the UK by June and will fully vaccinate their populations before them.

The UK are doing 400k+ per day. At the current rate pretty much the entire adult population will have had 2 shots by August. I look forward to us accelerating past them.

Lemming

dublin49 wrote: »

I work for a company that imports up to half our substantial turnover from the UK.It is currently a total mess ,absolute nightmare,but the thing is ,the energy that is going into fixing /finding solutions is incredible.Business will I think find a way and after a rocky few months when we become familiar with what we don't know now I am thinking we will make Brexit work and unintentionally help the Tories,where Brexit will become a nuisance rather than a disaster.Their trade with EU will definitely fall but they can blame Covid for that for years to come.I hate the fact that Farage,Gove,Boris et all won't face a reckoning but suspect they might just get away with it.

I said it earlier in response to someone else in this thread; the problem with abdicating all responsibility to "the markets" is to find that often those markets will come up with their own solution to your stupidity/problem in ways that you do not like nor benefit from. That is already happening with the relocation (either in part or in full) of British businesses in order to continue trading with their single most important market, at the expense of British jobs, investment, and tax take.

So yes there have been benefits from Brexit but not for UK PLC.

None of that benefits the Tories and they will not be able to hide from the year-on-year economic reports as they are released, as much as that will not stop them trying to bluster their way through. Might take a year or two for the mountain of sh1t to start falling in on top of them, but it will eventually. Liz Truss is reportedly already trying to hide from the reality of what she has done by refusing to answer questions that are part of her brief and instead palming off her departments responsibilities onto others.

tubercolossus

dublin49 wrote: »

I work for a company that imports up to half our substantial turnover from the UK.It is currently a total mess ,absolute nightmare,but the thing is ,the energy that is going into fixing /finding solutions is incredible.Business will I think find a way and after a rocky few months when we become familiar with what we don't know now I am thinking we will make Brexit work and unintentionally help the Tories,where Brexit will become a nuisance rather than a disaster.Their trade with EU will definitely fall but they can blame Covid for that for years to come.I hate the fact that Farage,Gove,Boris et all won't face a reckoning but suspect they might just get away with it.

Your company might survive because of a lot of effort by the staff, but that does not equate to 'making Brexit work'. And blaming Covid for everything for years to come will be a tad hard - even for the Tories and their pliant victims (GB public) - when there is a control group, ie the EU, on their doorstep. When everyone is fully vaccinated and Covid is as under control as it can be, what can possibly explain the UK's poor economic performance, except Brexit?

They might 'get away with it', but it won't be anything to do with us.

tubercolossus

tubercolossus wrote: »

Fixed that for you. They can't re-open their economy when the job is only half-done. Even Ireland is ahead of the UK on the percentage of people fully-vaccinated.

With rapidly declining numbers of new cases says otherwise, either the single dose is sufficient and/or herd immunity is kicking and we're coming to the end of the "winter Flu" season.
https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/gb

If the numbers continue on their current trend, they'll be the first to reopen (maybe second after Sweden who were widely criticised for their lax lockdown)

Leroy42

schmoo2k wrote: »

But if they do that for the next 4+ years, folks will get tired of it - makes sense to wait for Covid to blow over and then tackle Brexit properly, their only real play is to openly support rejoining the single market / customs area and that won't fly right now.

I know of no other opposition party that 'parks' pointing out the shortfalls in the government party until a later date.

After Covid, the excuse will be that everybody simply needs to get on with things to get back over Covid. After that it will be that that Brexit was ages ago and it is too late now.

It isn't about hitting them about Brexit, it is hitting them on the outcomes of Brexit. Has the subsidies promised to fishermen been paid out? Who is going to cover the additional costs of the bureaucracy? Will the government commit to ensuring no price rises to consumers? Can consumers get refunds for import duties on previously Tariff free items?

Take the word Brexit out of it. Concentrate on the actuals. Billy from Stoke can no longer import flowers. Joanne from Newcastle has lost her business as she can no longer tour with musicians. What is Johnson going to do to help these people? People that voted for a better future but now face a lost generation.

Sam Russell

Deleted User wrote: »

With rapidly declining numbers of new cases says otherwise, either the single dose is sufficient and/or herd immunity is kicking and we're coming to the end of the "winter Flu" season.
https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/gb

If the numbers continue on their current trend, they'll be the first to reopen (maybe second after Sweden who were widely criticised for their lax lockdown)

I do not know where that impression comes from. The UK reported 738 deaths yesterday and 799 the day before. They have 2.5 times the rate of death we are reporting for the whole pandemic. We have 4,000 deaths, they have 118,000 deaths.

Their numbers are falling, but so is everyone else's.

schmoo2k

Leroy42 wrote: »

I know of no other opposition party that 'parks' pointing out the shortfalls in the government party until a later date.

After Covid, the excuse will be that everybody simply needs to get on with things to get back over Covid. After that it will be that that Brexit was ages ago and it is too late now.

It isn't about hitting them about Brexit, it is hitting them on the outcomes of Brexit. Has the subsidies promised to fishermen been paid out? Who is going to cover the additional costs of the bureaucracy? Will the government commit to ensuring no price rises to consumers? Can consumers get refunds for import duties on previously Tariff free items?

Take the word Brexit out of it. Concentrate on the actuals. Billy from Stoke can no longer import flowers. Joanne from Newcastle has lost her business as she can no longer tour with musicians. What is Johnson going to do to help these people? People that voted for a better future but now face a lost generation.

Your forgetting the UK doesn't have a "rainbow" coalition like we have (thanks to the lack of PR). The Tories are in power for the next 4+ years no matter how much shouting happens...

That aside I agree with your PR tactics, it's just "what's the point"? What really counts is the 3 months (weeks?) prior to the next election.

Sam Russell

schmoo2k wrote: »

Your forgetting the UK doesn't have a "rainbow" coalition like we have (thanks to the lack of PR). The Tories are in power for the next 4+ years no matter how much shouting happens...

That aside I agree with your PR tactics, it's just "what's the point"? What really counts is the 3 months (weeks?) prior to the next election.

They had 'the Winter of Discontent' (1978-1979) that did for James Callaghan's Gov and let Thatcher in. Of course, not just strikes but the coldest winter for 16 years added to the misery.

Sometimes luck can be with you. Mind you three terms of Margaret Thatcher caused plenty of misery for the poorest.

NeuralNetwork

While complicated coalition and proportional representation systems can sometimes be more cumbersome when it comes to making executive decisions, I think you can also see how the inherent instability also acts as a serious check on power and a bit like a fuse in an electrical circuit. If there's a major issue, the government can fall and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I think our system actually showed it has become a proper deliberative mechanism and it proved its metal in the way it got through the financial crisis without going into total political chaos. I know we all like to slag off the Irish system, but I think as its constituted at the moment, and I would apply this to the full spectrum of parties not just the government, there's a level of sensible ability to work across the whole house when things need to be hammered out and it has brought much more diversity of opinion into the legislative process here, particularly over the last couple of decades.

We're seeing a situation emerge where the government parties know they have to work across the house and the opposition parties also know they won't be dismissed, so you're seeing genuine improvements in how the system works with ideas coming in from across the spectrum.

You can see the strength in that when you get a really chaotic situation like Brexit or the Trump presidency, where there's really no prospect of change of direction or challenge to the authority of the executive for the entirety of their term.

The likelihood of the British Government falling before the next scheduled general election is vanishingly small. It would require a massive revolt within the Tory Party itself and that's simply not going to happen.

The UK system with an overall majority has almost no checks and balances - the vast majority of power rests exclusively in the House of Commons. The House of Lords isn't the equivalent of a senate and is hampered by being an a bit of an anachronism with poor legitimacy because of how it operates. If you look at it at the moment, the most vocal opposition is actually coming from the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and one half of NI while the Labour Party in Westminster is still basically fighting with itself.

Then to make matters worse, Northern Ireland its effectively a parallel political system that votes for entirely different parties to the rest of the UK and Scotland is heading that way. So you've also got political systems existing within what is effectively a national government run by the English Parliament rebadged as the British Parliament. That's just going to inevitably lead to instability and there's absolutely no notion of creating a federal democracy in the UK. It seems to be an anathema to the Tories, even though it's pretty clear that their current system is untenable.

Strazdas

Deleted User wrote: »

The UK are doing 400k+ per day. At the current rate pretty much the entire adult population will have had 2 shots by August. I look forward to us accelerating past them.

Sweden and Denmark think they can vaccinate their entire population by June and that's just by using their EU allocation. This narrative of the UK 'beating' the EU out of sight in vaccinations is not going to last long at all.

NeuralNetwork

Strazdas wrote: »

Sweden and Denmark think they can vaccinate their entire population by June and that's just by using their EU allocation. This narrative of the UK 'beating' the EU out of sight in vaccinations is not going to last long at all.

Basically the UK got lucky on AstraZeneca. Had that gone the way of GSK's vaccine for example, or Institut Pasteur or Merck in the US, then it would have been a whole different ball game now.

The EU vaccination availability will suddenly ramp up, particularly with the very large scale production capacity for the Pfizer/BioNTech coming on stream - there's capacity from both of those companies and also Sanofi now involved and the J&J / Jannsen vaccine is arriving rather soon with CureVac which is partnered now with both Bayer and GSK.

I think we are risking being caught up in a tabloid narrative here on the vaccines. The reality is the EU is probably several weeks behind, it's not a fiasco by any means and is still far ahead of places like Japan, Korea etc etc.

The EU strategy has also been to use multiple vaccines and there's a lot of logic to that, rather than have all your eggs in one basket and that applies to both sustainability of supply and safety too. The last thing you would want to do is vaccinate 446m+ inhabitants with one product as any issues will be scaled up enormously without contingency. The UK is actually in that position now with AstraZeneca. If for example it proves useless on certain variants, the UK is back to square one with having to rollout again.

schmoo2k

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

While complicated coalition and proportional representation systems can sometimes be more cumbersome when it comes to making executive decisions, I think you can also see how the inherent instability also acts as a serious check on power and a bit like a fuse in an electrical circuit. If there's a major issue, the government can fall and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I think our system actually showed it has become a proper deliberative mechanism and it proved its metal in the way it got through the financial crisis without going into total political chaos. I know we all like to slag off the Irish system, but I think as its constituted at the moment, and I would apply this to the full spectrum of parties not just the government, there's a level of sensible ability to work across the whole house when things need to be hammered out and it has brought much more diversity of opinion into the legislative process here, particularly over the last couple of decades.

We're seeing a situation emerge where the government parties know they have to work across the house and the opposition parties also know they won't be dismissed, so you're seeing genuine improvements in how the system works with ideas coming in from across the spectrum.

You can see the strength in that when you get a really chaotic situation like Brexit or the Trump presidency, where there's really no prospect of change of direction or challenge to the authority of the executive for the entirety of their term.

The likelihood of the British Government falling before the next scheduled general election is vanishingly small. It would require a massive revolt within the Tory Party itself and that's simply not going to happen.

The UK system with an overall majority has almost no checks and balances - the vast majority of power rests exclusively in the House of Commons. The House of Lords isn't the equivalent of a senate and is hampered by being an a bit of an anachronism with poor legitimacy because of how it operates. If you look at it at the moment, the most vocal opposition is actually coming from the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and one half of NI while the Labour Party in Westminster is still basically fighting with itself.

While I agree for the most part - lets not forget it was the EU who came in and managed our books (and the UK forked out a good 10B at the time).

Which reminds me - when the UK were in the EU (and a net contributor), it was the EU who decided where the return funds went (Wales and N. England etc.). Now they are out all these "saved funds" will end up in London / S England...

CelticRambler

Deleted User wrote: »

With rapidly declining numbers of new cases says otherwise, either the single dose is sufficient and/or herd immunity is kicking and we're coming to the end of the "winter Flu" season.
https://covid19.who.int/region/euro/country/gb

If the numbers continue on their current trend, they'll be the first to reopen (maybe second after Sweden who were widely criticised for their lax lockdown)

There's a lot of bubble-vision in that post. Sure, cases are declining and isn't it great that a single dose of the vaccine seems to be working? Only, that's comparing the basket case that the UK was with the not-quite-such-a-basket-case that it is. Why compare with the outlier Sweden? Why not compare the 60 million British with the 60 million French? Half the number of cases daily, and no real lockdown other than the suspension of cultural events (proposals for the resumption of which are under discussion this week). So what are the French doing right that the British aren't?

All the positive spin on vaccine numbers hides a potential time-bomb for Johnson: all the Best of British pride in the world won't help those people who've had a dose of vaccine if one of the vaccine-resistant strains gets a foothold in the community when lockdown is lifted. It won't take many cases of vaccinated people dying from the South African or the Californian variant to stir up a whole lot of trouble for the Government; and that coming at a time when the next wave of Brexit barriers come into effect.

NeuralNetwork

schmoo2k wrote: »

While I agree for the most part - lets not forget it was the EU who came in and managed our books (and the UK forked out a good 10B at the time).

Which reminds me - when the UK were in the EU (and a net contributor), it was the EU who decided where the return funds went (Wales and N. England etc.). Now they are out all these "saved funds" will end up in London / S England...

Yeah we got outside assistance, but we could have also just gone into totally unusable politics, blamed everyone except the local protagonists and policy errors and gone off into some kind of unstable mess. That isn't what happened and I think that shows a strength to the system that all of it was able to muddle through and be pragmatic.

If the system had been hard 'us' vs 'them' with one government party trying ram reforms through without discussion, I am not sure that we would have come out of that without absolute mayhem. It would have looked more like 1980s England's reaction to Thatcher - dogmatic policies, little flexibility and a sense of no input or control leading to riots.

For all the praise of the French going out protesting, that's precisely why that happens too. It's a first-past-the-post system of government (albeit with two round voting) with little power for the opposition and a history of 7-year quasi-executive presidential terms until 2000, which built a tradition of communicating with government by rioting.

I'm not saying that the Irish system always makes good decisions. It absolutely does not. However, it does make decisions in a broad and deliberative way and you cannot really drive a coach and horses through political opinion and have to find consensus.

In the UK the Tories will simply drive on with Brexit and a rake of economic policies that are in reality only supported by a minority of the population who through quirk of maths hold a technical majority in parliament and that's where your instability in the UK will manifest in the months and years ahead. There's only so much spin can do.

L1011

schmoo2k wrote: »

(and the UK forked out a good 10B at the time).

A high-interest loan which they refused to allow be paid off early.

schmoo2k

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Yeah we got outside assistance, but we could have also just gone into totally unusable politics, blamed everyone except the local protagonists and policy errors and gone off into some kind of unstable mess. That isn't what happened and I think that shows a strength to the system that all of it was able to muddle through and be pragmatic.

If the system had been hard 'us' vs 'them' with one government party trying ram reforms through without discussion, I am not sure that we would have come out of that without absolute mayhem. It would have looked more like 1980s England's reaction to Thatcher - dogmatic policies, little flexibility and a sense of no input or control leading to riots.

For all the praise of the French going out protesting, that's precisely why that happens too. It's a first-past-the-post system of government with little power for the opposition and a history of 7-year quasi-executive presidential terms until 2000, which built a tradition of communicating with government by rioting.

I'm not saying that the Irish system always makes good decisions. It absolutely does not. However, it does make decisions in a broad and deliberative way and you cannot really drive a coach and horses through political opinion and have to find consensus.

In the UK the Tories will simply drive on with Brexit and a rake of economic policies that are in reality only supported by a minority of the population who through quirk of maths hold a technical majority in parliament and that's where your instability in the UK will manifest in the months and years ahead. There's only so much spin can do.

The term "violent agreement" comes to mind...

NeuralNetwork

L1011 wrote: »

A high-interest loan which they refused to allow be paid off early.

And one that largely was done out of self interest to protect against a hard write down against UK lenders. It's very easy to forget that some of the most aggressive lenders in the Irish market were late entrant UK banks, notably HBOS which lost an absolute fortune feeding a bubble. So did RBS.

Strazdas

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Basically the UK got lucky on AstraZeneca. Had that gone the way of GSK's vaccine for example, or Institut Pasteur or Merck in the US, then it would have been a whole different ball game now.

The EU vaccination availability will suddenly ramp up, particularly with the very large scale production capacity for the Pfizer/BioNTech coming on stream - there's capacity from both of those companies and also Sanofi now involved and the J&J / Jannsen vaccine is arriving rather soon with CureVac which is partnered now with both Bayer and GSK.

I think we are risking being caught up in a tabloid narrative here on the vaccines. The reality is the EU is probably several weeks behind, it's not a fiasco by any means and is still far ahead of places like Japan, Korea etc etc.

The EU strategy has also been to use multiple vaccines and there's a lot of logic to that, rather than have all your eggs in one basket and that applies to both sustainability of supply and safety too. The last thing you would want to do is vaccinate 446m+ inhabitants with one product as any issues will be scaled up enormously without contingency. The UK is actually in that position now with AstraZeneca. If for example it proves useless on certain variants, the UK is back to square one with having to rollout again.

Yes indeed, the issue of the UK being 'ahead' of the EU in vaccinations has largely been overstated and given way too much media prominence. The HSE have issued figures this afternoon that they anticipate 1.25m doses to be given in Ireland by March 31st - that would equate to over 16m in the UK. At that point, we would already be closing the gap on them at pace (and that is just by using Pfizer, AZ and Moderna).

CelticRambler

CelticRambler wrote: »

There's a lot of bubble-vision in that post. Sure, cases are declining and isn't it great that a single dose of the vaccine seems to be working? Only, that's comparing the basket case that the UK was with the not-quite-such-a-basket-case that it is. Why compare with the outlier Sweden? Why not compare the 60 million British with the 60 million French? Half the number of cases daily, and no real lockdown other than the suspension of cultural events (proposals for the resumption of which are under discussion this week). So what are the French doing right that the British aren't?

All the positive spin on vaccine numbers hides a potential time-bomb for Johnson: all the Best of British pride in the world won't help those people who've had a dose of vaccine if one of the vaccine-resistant strains gets a foothold in the community when lockdown is lifted. It won't take many cases of vaccinated people dying from the South African or the Californian variant to stir up a whole lot of trouble for the Government; and that coming at a time when the next wave of Brexit barriers come into effect.

Comparing to Sweden is more appropriate due to the way the case numbers were higher earlier on so in reality herd immunity has kicked in far stronger than elsewhere.


It is my opinion that the rapid drop in case numbers is more to do with herd immunity than vaccinations. I cannot prove that of course.

Strazdas

Strazdas wrote: »

Sweden and Denmark think they can vaccinate their entire population by June and that's just by using their EU allocation. This narrative of the UK 'beating' the EU out of sight in vaccinations is not going to last long at all.

As I said, I look forward to accelerating past them.

redcup342

Strazdas wrote: »

Yes indeed, the issue of the UK being 'ahead' of the EU in vaccinations has largely been overstated and given way too much media prominence. The HSE have issued figures this afternoon that they anticipate 1.25m doses to be given in Ireland by March 31st - that would equate to over 16m in the UK. At that point, we would already be closing the gap on them at pace (and that is just by using Pfizer, AZ and Moderna).

Well they are only on the first dose.

But anyways, theoretically if the EU didn't exist the Vaccine rollout would be an absolute sh*tshow with every country for itself inflating the cost of the vaccines and slowing everything down as its important to vaccinate the entire population and not just the ones inside the imaginary lines.

Like how effective would it be if Germany had a really high vaccination rate if its poorer neighbors to the east couldn't afford the high price and were travelling into Germany anyway.

I'd prefer they roll it out properly and everyone in EU is taken care off rather than every person for themselves.

The EU just looks slow because the UK rush through the whole process and paid more for it. If everyone did that it wouldn't work

Strazdas

Strazdas wrote: »

Yes indeed, the issue of the UK being 'ahead' of the EU in vaccinations has largely been overstated and given way too much media prominence. The HSE have issued figures this afternoon that they anticipate 1.25m doses to be given in Ireland by March 31st - that would equate to over 16m in the UK. At that point, we would already be closing the gap on them at pace (and that is just by using Pfizer, AZ and Moderna).

UK are currently over 16 million. At their current rate (lower end) of 400k per day for the next 40 days that'll be another 16 million (nice lining up of figures there ) so the UK (at the lower end of their current rate) are on pace to be at 32 million by the end of March while we'll be at 1.25 million. We're "on track" to do 80k this week while they'll do 3 or 4 million.
By the time we really start speeding up they'll be winding their down.

Sam Russell

redcup342 wrote: »

Well they are only on the first dose.

But anyways, theoretically if the EU didn't exist the Vaccine rollout would be an absolute sh*tshow with every country for itself inflating the cost of the vaccines and slowing everything down as its important to vaccinate the entire population and not just the ones inside the imaginary lines.

Like how effective would it be if Germany had a really high vaccination rate if its poorer neighbors to the east couldn't afford the high price and were travelling into Germany anyway.

I'd prefer they roll it out properly and everyone in EU is taken care off rather than every person for themselves.

The EU just looks slow because the UK rush through the whole process and paid more for it. If everyone did that it wouldn't work

The UK rushed the approval, and then did not follow that approved vaccination regimen. They have been lucky so far.

Were Germany, France and ourselves correct to restrict AZ to those not over 65, and Switzerland to not approving it at all?

Quin_Dub

Deleted User wrote: »

UK are currently over 16 million. At their current rate (lower end) of 400k per day for the next 40 days that'll be another 16 million (nice lining up of figures there ) so the UK (at the lower end of their current rate) are on pace to be at 32 million by the end of March while we'll be at 1.25 million. We're "on track" to do 80k this week while they'll do 3 or 4 million.
By the time we really start speeding up they'll be winding their down.

How many people have had or will have had the second done by that time though.

Their numbers are artificially high because of their 1st/2nd dose policy.

CelticRambler

Deleted User wrote: »

It is my opinion that the rapid drop in case numbers is more to do with herd immunity than vaccinations. I cannot prove that of course.

Nope. Especially as lockdown directly opposes the development of herd immunity. It also causes a rapid drop in case numbers, with or without vaccines.

Meanwhile, here on the continent, it seems that the general public has decided it's better to wait for the more effective any-other-vaccine rather than gamble on the proven-to-be-not-that-great AZ.

It's this kind of (herd) behaviour that makes a nonsense of comparing one territory's first-dose numbers with another, or even attributing changes in infection rate to political gambles.

Edit: oh look - https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/feb/18/coronavirus-live-news-un-says-130-countries-have-not-received-a-single-vaccine-dose?page=with:block-602e9cd58f08bdbed283aa93#block-602e9cd58f08bdbed283aa93

Reported daily coronavirus infections have been falling across the world for a month and on Tuesday hit their lowest since mid-October, figures that suggest the seasonality of the virus show.

Is that all the British government's doing?

I did say in a previous post, that it is also down to the winter flu season coming to an end, so of course cases are dropping, for multiple reasons.
Lockdowns when people freely mix in shopping centres. places of work etc, are not really lockdowns at all.
Lockdowns are what they did in China!