Sorry, gotta rant once more:
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Matt Hancock says the UK has what amounts to an exclusivity deal with Astra-Zeneca. Fair enough, the benefit of a superior negotiating agenda to the extreme emphasis on driving down price which the EU pursued (and, you have to admit, very successfully, even if it is a pyrrhic victory).
But that condescending little lecture about honouring contracts, free trade and lauding AZ's behaviour? He MUST be joking!
First, let's not delude ourselves: the ONLY reason why the UK has not imposed export bans of its own is that this better contract obviates the need to do so... it just used the first-mover advantage to achieve the same end result by less controversial means. But does anybody seriously believe Mr. Smug here would hesitate for one moment if the situation were reversed? Why secure an exclusivity deal in the first place if you are not of that mindset?
Kudos on the smart move, but cut the gloating - it's tasteless. We are not talking about a mere commercial disadvantage in this particular trade dispute, the vaccine shortage in the EU is
killing people! If, taken all round, an export ban is judged to reduce the number of deaths, then it would be the *responsible* thing to do! Granted, it would be down to having grievously (or naively?) missed all opportunities to implement a less toxic solution at an earlier stage - but needs must when the devil drives.
Second, Astra-Zeneca may have a fine vaccine, but its conduct (at least toward non-UK customers) has been anything but "absolutely brilliant". So it did not commit to hard delivery targets to the EU, rather than a "best reasonable effort"? Sorry, but I think its execution legitimately falls well short of even that standard. Why overpromise by 100 to 300%? I don't have any information that isn't in the public domain, but from what I've been able to understand, it increasingly seems as though the company premised its planning on assumptions so over-optimistic as to be ridiculous.
There are 30M doses sitting in US warehouses which cannot be exported due to a ban - that should have been entirely foreseeable, but I could actually excuse this part. Where it gets so egregious as to be possibly culpable is the apparent reliance on sites in the UK (having previously signed the above deal which expressly rules them out!) and EU plants which it did not manage to get certified in time. It's not EMA's fault that AZ is so late in handing over the required documentation! You can maybe fault the EU commission for being so gullible as to unquestioningly buy into this pie-in-the-sky scheme, but ultimately the buck does stop with AZ here.