“To be successful as a coach,” says Bud Grant (93), who led the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, “you need a patient wife, a loyal dog, and a good quarterback (the most important player and team leader in soccer. American), but not necessarily in that order ”. Applied to British and European politics today, it could be argued that to be successful as president or prime minister, you need a patient electorate, a loyal Cabinet and parliamentary group, and a good vaccine, and not necessarily in that order.
Boris Johnson meets two of the three requirements. His ministers and like-minded parliamentarians are not as brilliant as they could be, but their loyalty is for the moment bombproof; The United Kingdom, thanks to Brexit, has negotiated on its own with pharmaceutical companies, it seems to have done very well and has vaccines to give and take (almost six doses per inhabitant); the electorate, after a year of pandemic restrictions and confinements up and down, does not have too much patience. But now what he wants most is to be pricked in the arm, and if he compares what is here with what is on the continent, he is left with what is here.
Great Britain has created in just one year the best vaccine production and distribution network in the world
After a series of monumental mistakes and failures that have raised the death toll in the UK to more than 100,000, Johnson appears to be doing well, at least for the moment, with vaccination. He has touched gold. Not subject to the regulations and bureaucracy of Brussels, and with the advantage that AstraZeneca (one of the main manufacturers) is an Anglo-Swedish company that collaborates with the University of Oxford, it has already managed to get eight million people vaccinated, and the The objective is that by March all risk groups will be there, and by early summer, all those over 50 years of age.
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The ways of politics, like those of the Lord, are sometimes inscrutable, and until recently no one could have predicted that relations between London and the EU would be blown up over the issue of vaccines, rather than trade protectionism. or peace in Northern Ireland. The more Brussels demands that London divert part of its injections to the mainland, or the more it threatens to veto the export of inoculations manufactured on its territory to these islands, the more the British are on the side of their prime minister. The fear of covid has united remainers Y leavers (supporters of staying and leaving Europe) in a way that all the political arguments had not achieved in five years.
The covers of the press yesterday, and not only the sensationalist, were representative. “No, the EU cannot keep our vaccines,” headlined, for example, the Daily Mail ; “Wait your turn! The selfish Europeans want the vaccines that are ours! ”, The Daily Express . But even Labor leader Keir Starmer, proud of his internationalism, supported Downing Street in its decision to stand up to Brussels and not divert even one of the 100 million injections bought from Astra / Zeneca, at least until everyone who wants here one has put it on.
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The perception on this side of the English Channel is that, on the issue of vaccines, Brexit has been an advantage and Johnson has done much better than the EU, which has bought proportionally fewer doses, is behind in authorizations and has wasted time haggling over prices. And now he complains. London reacted late and poorly to the pandemic, but has used the last year to develop perhaps the best immunization production and distribution network in the world, involving scientists, legal experts, doctors, nurses, truck drivers and even the army. A formula that is better than a patient wife, a loyal dog, and a good quarterback.
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