On the positive your government didn’t screw up covid vaccine response and Britain is number two in the world only behind Israel vaccinating their population.
Meanwhile in Brussels.
There are going to be positives and negatives getting your independence back.
As I said the vaccination program is going well.
Largely as it is being run through the NHS.
Unlike the track and trace disaster, which the Tories outsourced at great expense.
What would your vaccination program look like if you were still EU?
No better but probably fairly similar
The U.K.’s first advantage was in getting going early. The country’s drugs regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), was the first in Europe to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, back on December 2 — weeks ahead of the European Medicines Agency. This opened the door to nearly 1 million doses of that jab — manufactured in Belgium — being delivered to the U.K. by the second week of December.
Since then, the MHRA has also authorized the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, and a third by U.S. drugmaker Moderna (though that was two days behind the EU). These prompt decisions were possible because the U.K. changed national medicine regulations in the fall to enable the MHRA to give temporary authorization to a vaccine that meets safety and efficacy standards but has yet to finish the licensing process.
This mechanism was available to all EU countries, but they opted for a more rigorous licensing procedure in which the companies, rather than taxpayers, accept liability if there are problems. With the end of the Brexit transition period just weeks away, the U.K. would have felt little political pressure to sign up to the EU’s commitment to roll out vaccines to all countries at the same time. Operating outside the EMA process, even though it was vastly accelerated, meant avoiding the [inevitable extra bureaucracy]
(Pressure mounts on EU regulator to approve coronavirus vaccine — and fast – POLITICO) of working with 27 other countries.
Similar to your current program? Or similar to the EU disarray?
Similar to our own, which was always permitted under EU law.
There would have been political pressure to join the EU wide programme but we have a habit of doing our own thing.
Noone can say for sure, being fair.
Fair enough. Thanks.
I imagine the pressure for equity would have been tremendous.
Making nice with Europe hasn’t exactly been a feature of British foreign policy for the last ten years or so, so who knows.
The brexiters are claiming it as a win, regardless.
Given the economic turmoil and potential break up of the UK, you can understand them clutching at every straw they can.
It wasn’t successful…took longer than two weeks to even slow it down.
And life was never going to “go back to normal” and open up until we found good therapies/vaccines.
It was political…to get people to buy in that defeating COVID would be quick and painless…because modern people suffer from massive ADD.
They can’t be in on anything for the long haul anymore.
Today’s Americans would have been suing for a peace treaty with Germany and Japan by Christmastime 1941.
I think it is very difficult to judge the state of economics anywhere given the lockdowns because of the virus.
Of course every side will use it to their political advantage.
The impact of Brexit alone on the English economy is practically impossible to estimate and probably always will be - the virus happened.
I think it is also too early, even without the virus. It takes time to ride out the resentment and subsequent backlash. Eventually things will settle and logistics will rise to the top of concerns again.
If the alliances and economies existed for valid reasons, they will return, albeit in a different form. If they were artificial, they won’t. And probably shouldn’t.
I don’t know a lot about the EU. I do understand alliances. It seems to me the EU was originally formed to be competitive. Not a bad thing.
But the equity focus made it untenable for Core countries like England. To me, it’s kind of a microcosm of why communism doesn’t work.
and potential break up of the UK
My roots are in Scotland and as an Texan, of course I am yelling for independence from the English crown! 
I don’t know what the right thing for the country is, but I do believe in self-determination. I suspect it will be like most change (if it happens) in that there will be much ado, people will adapt and it will end up ok. Maybe even better. Forcing an alliance to stay together for tradition is about the worst reason I can think of. Causes a lot of resentment.
Besides, if Scotland does leave the UK, it’s not like they can physically move across town.
Except china.
It’s not really about alliances, more about economic gravity.
UK firms will always struggle to compete with EU firms with the trade barriers. This will cause firms to move to the EU, its inevitable.
Outside the single market the UK will see slow but inevitable decline.
And that’s before the politics upheaval caused by imposing a border down the Irish Sea between Ulster and Britain.
Taking Scotland out of the EU against its will was a gift to the SNP, a plurality of Scots now favour independence. I can’t say I blame them at all.
But that will just be another self inflicted wound, putting up trade barriers with your biggest trading partner is always going to do more harm than good.
But my wife got vaccinated today, maybe that wouldn’t have happened without brexit.
If the alliances were formed for economic gravity, it is about the alliances. There is more than one way to gain gravity.
Nothing is inevitable on a long enough timeline.
On the contrary, all possible outcomes are inevitable on a long enough time line.
The EU was always a compromise, rich countries wanted to export goods and services to poorer members to get rich and poorer countries wanted to export people to richer countries to get rich.
And it works, sort of.
The UK never accepted that, we wanted to have our cake and eat it.
The EU is better of without us. We’ll still be friends and allies, Western social democracies always are.
But the withdrawal has opened wounds in the UK that will fester.
Ya it looked like you guys were number 2 and the U.S. number 3 on vaccine jabs from what I’ve read the EU convinced member states into letting them handle the vaccine rollout which is usually done country by country.
I always wondered if the Brits might look the smartest country in the room if in a couple of years the whole damn thing falls apart that is the EU. Never know many thought Greece would be the end then the financial crisis then Brexit now it looks the banks in Italy and Spain are kaput. Not sure how many bullets left to dodge.
France’s central bank said on Monday it expects economic activity to decline between 9 and 10 percent this year, a bigger drop than previously forecast due to a new lockdown.
French economy projected to shrink by 9-10 percent in 2020 - The Local
Yeah. Brexit. Thats the thing.
