Fat lady is still singing over vaccine

It's not over yet. Even the Observer has to lead on it, although, curiously the Sunday Times left the story to page 8.

EU’s vaccine blunder reopens Brexit battle over Irish border

Tory MPs use short-lived announcement of export ban to call for overhaul of trade deal, as EU chief is attacked over U-turn

The European Union’s threat to impose a vaccine border between Northern Ireland and the Republic risks reigniting one of Brexit’s bitterest disputes, as senior Tories said the move proved the need for an immediate overhaul of the bloc’s treatment of Northern Ireland....David Jones, a Brexiter and former Tory cabinet minister, [and A Foster, T Villiers and other 'senior Tories'] said: “The protocol must go. The EU have shown how ready they are to weaponise it, even with no provocation, in a fit of spite. We have to put more sensible measures in its place.”

An unmistakable conclusion which completely exposes all that hypocritical shit about putting peace in Ireland first, as long suspected in this blog.

The World Health Organization (WHO) condemned the move and the pharmaceutical industry warned that the measures would damage their vaccination efforts....the heads of the UK- and Europe-wide industry bodies jointly warn that export bans would leave them “trying to fight the pandemic with our hands tied behind our backs”.

The row has heaped huge pressure on European commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who has already faced blame over the relative slowness of the EU’s vaccination programme compared with nations such as the US, UK and Israel. 

As I say, it doesn't seem to be over yet... 

The Irish government will instead [still] be required to report on the quantity of doses distributed to Northern Ireland in a sign that the commission remains concerned that it could be a backdoor route for the movement of vaccines to the rest of the UK....An EU official said: “We have also got suspicions that certain vaccinations are leaving Europe instead of coming to us, so we have put in place this mechanism to check.”

EC wants an Irish border after all*

The BBC had a revealing story yesterday to follow up on the vaccine wars:

The EU is introducing controls on vaccines made in the bloc, including to Northern Ireland, amid a row about delivery shortfalls.

Under the Brexit deal, all products should be exported from the EU to Northern Ireland without checks.

But the EU believed this could be used to circumvent export controls, with NI becoming a backdoor to the wider UK....

NI First Minister Arlene Foster described the move as "an incredible act of hostility" by the EU.... Arlene Foster said the EU had placed a "hard border" between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland...."By triggering Article 16 in this manner, the European Union has once again shown it is prepared to use Northern Ireland when it suits their interests but in the most despicable manner - over the provision of a vaccine which is designed to save lives," she said...."At the first opportunity the EU has placed a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland over the supply chain of the coronavirus vaccine.

The EU invoked Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol which allows parts of the deal to be unilaterally overridden.

In a new regulation, the European Commission stated: "This is justified as a safeguard measure pursuant to Article 16 of that Protocol in order to avert serious societal difficulties due to a lack of supply threatening to disturb the orderly implementation of the vaccination campaigns in the Member States."

Unionist politicians in Northern Ireland have been agitating for the UK government to use Article 16 to reduce checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

The government has been resisting this, insisting the new arrangements are not creating serious difficulties.

[In an Analysis section]
The EU's actions are seen as an audacious move. Unionist politicians are incredulous.
Throughout the Brexit process the EU vehemently insisted there could be no border on the island of Ireland. For a while the entire trade deal hinged on this.
But now, to critics, it appears that principle has vanished over vaccines.
It begs the question, if the EU can decide to push this button on this, what else might they use it for in future?
Those who strongly oppose the Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland will be pushing even harder now for the UK to use Article 16 to override parts of the deal for its own purposes, too

Who knew there was an Article 16? The Graun covered the u-turn rather than the initial aggression, of course... 

The EU has said it is “not triggering the safeguard clause” to block Covid vaccine exports from the bloc to Northern Ireland after widespread condemnation of the move.

The EU’s initial decision to trigger a Brexit deal clause to place controls on the export of vaccines sparked criticism on both sides of Irish border and led to frantic talks including a call between the UK and Ireland to avert a full-scale crisis.
On news that the move to trigger article 16 of the Northern Ireland protocol was not going ahead, the Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, tweeted that it was a “welcome decision by the European commission” and “a positive development given the many challenges we face in tackling Covid-19”.

Irish government sources told reporters the initial decision was “completely unnecessary” and had “explosive political implications”....It is believed the decision was made without consultation with either the UK or Ireland government....tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol had risen over the past fortnight with traders unhappy with the extent of checks on goods traded across the Irish Sea and controversy over the future movement of troops between Great Britain and NI.

“To retaliate in this way using the Northern Ireland protocol as a football is very dangerous,” they [an EU diplomatic source I think] said.

Spain’s foreign minister, Arancha González Laya, told BBC’s Newsnight the use of article 16 was an “accident” and “a mishap” that had been “repaired”

I saw the broadcast and it was clear she was, as we Brits say, taking the piss, trotting out the EU line about the interest only in transparency, insisting there was no hostility, assuming a sweet innocence that would not fool a 5-year old, an entirely cynical performance. The (DUP) NI spokesperson, whom the Graun does not quote was furious

Vaccine wars warm up

This has been fascinating overall. I have focused on Graui coverage, but the anti-EU press has had a field day. 

Background stories include these:

The leaders of Britain’s five largest business groups have warned the government that firms face “substantial difficulties” at UK ports since Brexit, with the prospect of a “significant loss of business” if the situation is allowed to continue.

And this one

An inaugural meeting between the UK’s new head of mission to Brussels and senior EU officials in Brussels has been “postponed” in response to the status of the bloc’s ambassador in London being downgraded....The introductory meeting has been “postponed for the time being” by the EU, in what sources said was a tit-for-tat move over a long-running dispute.

Tit for tat politics? Hostility towards the UK? Surely not so from our cosmopolitan European friends? Incompetence from the UK Government and pettiness by Boris surely? But then this

Millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine could be blocked from entering Britain from the EU within days after Brussels said it had to respond to shortages emerging in member states.

The European federation of pharmaceutical industries and associations warned that the commission plan could lead to a breakdown of global supply of vaccines. “Global supply chains are key to delivering vaccines to protect citizens … Risking retaliatory measures from other regions at this crucial moment in the fight against Covid-19 is not in anyone’s best interest,” the industry group said.

The 27 EU member states were devastated by the announcement last week by the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca that it would only be able to deliver 25% of the 100m doses expected by the end of March, citing production problems in its Belgian plant...The company’s assurances to the UK government that it would fulfil its order of 2m doses a day without delay further fuelled the anger felt by officials involved in the EU’s faltering programme. Just 2% of the EU adult population has received a vaccine jab, compared with 11% of those in the UK, with scant sign of the bloc’s vaccination drive gaining momentum.

Peter Liese, a German MEP in Angela Merkel’s CDU party, said: “If the only solution is to have a reduction of the delivery to the UK, and that would bring more vaccine to the EU, that is only fair.”

Things were to get much sharper...

EU feels entitled (!) to UK vaccination supplies

Unbelievable spite and pettiness revealed in this Graun story  Hypocrisy and cynicism as well, while I am here -- a Eurocrat talking about moral duty! The usual double-dealing about what sort of contract they insist they signed as well. No doubt the ECJ will decide.

 

Belgian regulators have launched an investigation into AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine production site near Brussels on the request of the European commission, in an escalation of the row over shortages within the EU.

The Anglo-Swedish company has said it will be able to deliver to EU member states only about 25% of the 100m doses expected by the end of March due to a production problem at the Belgian site owned by the French life-sciences company Novasep. The vaccine is expected to be authorised by the European medicines agency on Friday....At the same time, AstraZeneca has assured Downing Street that it will be able to produce 2m doses a week of the vaccine to the UK in order to successfully fulfil a total order of 100m jabs. The vaccine was authorised by the UK regulator in December.

The backdrop to the investigation is AstraZeneca’s insistence that it will not make up the shortfall in deliveries to the EU by diverting vaccine doses made in Oxford and Staffordshire and put into vials in Wrexham....“The UK agreement was reached in June, three months before the European one,” he said in an interview on Monday. “As you could imagine, the UK government said the supply coming out of the UK supply chain would go for the UK first. Basically that’s how it is.”

“We reject the logic of first come, first served,” the [EU] commissioner said. “That may work in a butcher’s shop but not in contracts [with we lofty creatures] and not in our advanced purchase agreements.” [and]...AstraZeneca had a moral as well as contractual duty to treat the EU similarly to the UK....She said: “We are in a pandemic. We lose people every day. These are not numbers, they’re not statistics. These are persons with families with friends and colleagues that are all affected as well....“Pharmaceutical companies, vaccine developers have moral, societal and contractual responsibilities, which they need to uphold. The view that the company is not obliged to deliver because we signed a best effort agreement is neither correct, nor is it acceptable.”

Dark politics behind confiscated sandwiches*

Symbolic politics continues with this in el Graun

UK insists it will not grant EU ambassador full diplomatic status

Foreign Office says EU should not be treated as nation state, despite 142 countries granting bloc this status

 Seems very petty, no?

A Barnier threat also appears, in the form of cosmo wisdom, of course: 

I think it would be very wise in my view for the UK to find a clever solution.” [fleshed out with this] The EU mission in the UK is active in trying to explain EU thinking, including most recently on how the City of London will be treated post-Brexit. The emphasis of the mission since its inception has been on building cooperation between the UK and EU.

A different angle appears in the Times today (subscription):

The EU is prepared to ease post-Brexit border friction if Britain drops its plan to create a “Singapore on the Thames”, according to senior diplomatic sources....Brussels is open to talks on freeing up trade but only if Boris Johnson abandons plans to tear up EU rules such as the working time directive. “Of course we can in future discuss how to have less friction,” a senior European diplomat said....“Discussing further facilitation or ways to reduce friction would depend on what the UK is doing and where they want to go. Initiating that conversation and negotiation will not be made easier if the other side of the table is talking up deregulation or Singapore on the Thames.”...The EU will not discuss easing customs measures or making paperwork easier if Mr Johnson embraces the high subsidy and low regulation Singapore model. European sources said that creating a “Singapore on the Thames and increasing the working week” beyond EU rules would politically rule out any negotiations.

Even talking of planning deviating from EU rules brings this sort of petty retaliation!. Delays,shortages sandwich confiscations and lorry turn-backs were not down to teething problems. Nor were they because of overlooked issues of paperwork. It is deliberate EU obstruction!

 

The background has been investigated in a substantial series of articles in London Review of Books, of all places by P Anderson, veteran founder of the New Left. It is a lengthy but devastating critique of the democratic deficits of central insitiutions of the EU, the European Council, the Commission, the Parliament , the Central Bank and the ECJ.There is a brisk summary in this week's Briefings for Britain by the redoubtable R Tombs ( who also has a new book out)

The Anderson piece itself traces the ways in which the notion of an integrated 'Europe' developed over the decades. What conceptions of a social and political entity was it based on? Several were involved, from US federalism to notions of society in ancient Greece, via Machiavelli and the discreet oligopolies of early Holland.  But none of them really involved any notion of representative democracy. It was always about effiicient management via compromise between the interests of the various elites, with the interests of 'the people' catered for in various ways economically and symbolically. 

The symbolism was always seen as the weakest strand in the EU, says Anderson, despite the sad flags and anthems, and political unity especially was compromised by the lack of an obvious political theatre, a process with competing programmes discussed in public and ultimately decided by vote. This would offer a kind of bread and circuses for thinking folk.

It all works by publicly agreed consensus (where the major powers have all the influence in practice) with no disclosure of any discussions or disagreements.  There have been tensions -- eg between cultural notions of European civilisation and Anglo-US notions of rational management of modern economies -- but largely compromises between, say neo-liberalism, civilisation and bureaucracy.

 Anderson agues that the real problem posed by Brexit has always been to this political notion of Europe as secret compromises betwen elites, and unaccountable institutions like the  central ones are (uniquely,the ECB answers to no-one and its proceedings are secret, the Council never discloses its arguments, the ECJ only publishes its agreed findings and so on) . Hence the disdain for or sheer incomprehension of concepts like sovereignty of nations or Parliaments. They had to punish the UK for withdrawing. They were prepared to risk even the hard economic cost of Brexit to minimise any political costs is how Anderson puts it.

The most interesting bits for me have been how the legal bureaucrats have come to dominate politics in a familiar way. Politics is vague and non-specific and the details have to be thrashed out. In the EU the lawyers in the ECJ played a major role, facilitated by politicians advancing the cause of the ill-defined 'Europe' over national interests, beginning with modest cases like permitting Europe-wide trade despite local restrictions, and ending in permitting Central Bank financial policy against the interests and policies of national governments (especially Greece). Agreed treaties became interpretable by the ECJ. Political procedures became legal matters. As an example of the massive advantage this conveys, the legendary acquis communitaire, the collection of regulations to which trade needs to conform, apparently runs to a completely inaccessible 90,000 pages -- only teams of EU specialist lawyers can possibly manage it. Apparently the Irish PM admitted he had never read it even though he signed a treaty accepting it.

All this is a marvellous example of the trends described in Weber's excellent studies of the march of purposive rationality and bureaucracy in the 1920s. It would end in an 'iron cage' he foresaw. 

How wise the UK Government were to be so suspicious of the appraently innocent proposals advanced in the last few weeks of the talks. And how wise they are now not to trust the bastards an inch.

Minor interests in Anderson also include the real backgrounds of the politicians central in forging the European visiion -- not comso liberals at all as in the imagination of the Graun but former Nazis and corrupt Italian politicians. 

Even the blessed Ursula was charged with plagiarism! Here is a bit from Wikipedia:

In 2015, researchers collaborating at the VroniPlag Wiki reviewed von der Leyen's 1991 doctoral thesis and alleged that 43.5% of the thesis pages contained plagiarism, and in 23 cases citations were used that did not verify claims for which they were given.^[33][34] Multiple notable German academics such as Gerhard Dannemann [de] and Volker Rieble [de] publicly accused von der Leyen of intended plagiarism.^[35] The Hannover Medical School conducted an investigation and concluded in March 2016 that while the thesis contains plagiarism, no intention to deceive could be proven.^[36][37]

The university decided not to revoke von der Leyen's medical degree.^[36] Critics questioned the independence of the commission that reviewed the thesis as von der Leyen personally knew its director from joint work for an alumni association.^[37] Various media outlets also criticized that the decision was nontransparent, not according to established rules and failing to secure high academic standards.^[37][38][39]

 

Toynbee looks back with 'told you so' glee

The beloved P Toynbee still can't let it lie, of course. Here she is with a list of whinges:

 fishers across Britain poleaxed by new costs and regulations, their catches rotting before they reach EU markets. It’s costing them millions already....

It wasn't that long ago that she was saying they should be ignored altogether, lazy bastards,  so we could get a deal with the EC of course.

 

Investigative journalism at the GRaun has now been reduced to gathering items from the email inbox:

Here are some random [ !]discoveries since Brexit day....The Sun [sic] warns of Brexit’s threat to the Cheltenham Festival:...The fashion industry – especially Asos-type, cheap end with small margins – is hitting a rules-of-origin crisis, paying new duties on its many products manufactured outside the EU. Fun stories in the Sun include the lorry driver crossing the Gibraltar/Spain border whose bottle of Nando’s sauce is confiscated, along with all those ham sandwiches snatched by the Dutch. ...The Daily Telegraph reports the flight of Europeans from England, but not from “remain-voting Scotland and Northern Ireland”. Farmers Weekly sends up flares about plunging meat prices, due to delayed exports.

And then there is the unfolding Northern Ireland disaster. Stena Line ferries has diverted its Great Britain-Northern Ireland sea crossings to the Rosslare-to-Cherbourg route instead....lorries carrying exports to England return empty, doubling his costs, as English exporters find it too costly to sell to Northern Ireland – and that’s permanent. The Telegraph reports that one in 10 lorries are being turned back at the EU border. Delays will continue: spot checks at EU borders are standard. So will queues, lorry parks and roadside squalor.

Heaven help us if Cheltenham is threatened. Not by Covid either. Or the fashion industry with its cheap imports. Goood job there are 'fun stories' as well .The Dutch police were only having fun.

 

There is still mileage in repeating EC lobbying with the talks going on about the City, of course

Yet still, most economically deadly is the unseen slipping away of invisibles, where that 80% of the economy in services is already leaking tax revenues. Bloomberg keeps up its grim recording of no likely progress: “City of London’s plight laid bare as Brexit deal hopes fade,” it reports....

Toynbee can only fight the old sad causes, of course, and she admits that 

The pandemic has worsened the Brexit effect, but that was a good reason to extend the transition period....It’s only human to confess to some remainer “I told you so” glee ...Many like Paul Joy on Hastings beach are still as passionately pro-Brexit as ever. Fearlessly, Labour needs to regain its voice of outrage that Brexit leaders deliberately shut their ears to what leaving the single market and the customs union really meant. A better Brexit deal really was possible. 

Return of an old friend...

 The Observer's cartoonist finds inspiration er..just in time...