For us 'Brexiteers' !!
Jigger me - I had a chuckle at this one - it's the weekend so munch your last bit of egg and enjoy. Many a true word said in jest :-
"What is Ursula von der Leyen’s most significant achievement in her first year as president of the European Union Commission? If we leave aside teaching a generation of Anglo-Saxon pundits that “von” is always in lower case, the answer to that is easy: the creation of a British vaccine industry.
The UK has not been a major manufacturer of vaccines, but the bullying and threats from Brussels means we soon will be. In effect, there has been an “Ursula dividend” as the UK works out it cannot rely on supplies from the other side of the English channel, and needs to make more stuff at home.
But it doesn’t stop there. The same logic will apply to a range of industries, from power, to transport, to financial services and food.
As the EU turns increasingly aggressive and protectionist, supply chains will shorten, and plenty of money will be available for ramping up domestic production. That is a huge potential opportunity – all British business has to do now is seize it. It is hard to see many tangible achievements from the EU’s decision last summer to take control of the Continent’s procurement of potential Covid-19 vaccines.
It ordered too few of the wrong shots, failed to invest in production, dithered on authorisations, undermined confidence in the only one it bought in quantity, and then lashed out at the companies making the vaccines in a blind panic.
The result has been a woeful vaccination campaign, falling behind such advanced, technologically savvy countries as, er, Morocco and Turkey, and a third wave of Covid is now engulfing the Continent. It hasn’t been great.
What it has achieved is turning Britain into a major vaccine player for the first time. Although the UK has a world-class life sciences sector, we were not big on making vaccines. India, China, and of course the United States were far more significant on the global stage, while in Europe, France and Belgium were much bigger players.
AstraZeneca was not in the industry at all, and while GlaxoSmithKline was in the big three, alongside Merck and Sanofi, it was hardly dominant. That is now about to change.
Faced with threats from the EU to block exports of Covid vaccines, the UK is quite rightly beefing up its own capacity. There are already a couple of plants making the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, and a bottling operation in Wrexham. Novavax will make its vaccine – stunningly effective in trials and expected to be authorised soon – in Stockton-on-Tees, while GSK will bottle it in the North East.
Valneva might be a French company, but the British Government has invested millions in its potential shot, and it will be manufactured at a new plant in Livingston in Scotland.
Meanwhile, the huge new Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre in Oxfordshire will go live later this year with the capacity not just to research new jabs, but to make up to 70m doses every six months.
From virtually nothing, by next year the UK will have a world-class vaccine industry, at a time when not only will Covid still be a threat but ground-breaking mRNA technologies are promising a range of inoculations against a whole range of diseases from cancers to dementia. In effect, that is the “Ursula dividend” in action.
It won’t stop there, however. Over the next couple of years we will see more examples of precisely the same effect. Take power, for example. It is unlikely that the UK will want to rely on French, Belgium, and Dutch electricity.
The French have already threatened to cut it off over trade terms, and, heck, in a crisis there can no longer be any doubt that von der Leyen would impose export bans if we were “unfairly” boiling up cups of tea using European juice while the Continent ran out.
The result? There will be lots of demand for more green, renewable energy, and plenty of Treasury cash, and guaranteed long-term contracts, to help make that happen.
Likewise, Britain will want to reduce the amount of trade that is routed through Rotterdam, and relocate it to British ports.
It is already clear that rigid enforcement of the paperwork means it is now virtually impossible to sell food to the EU, so instead UK consumption of domestic produce will rise.
And at the same time, as we will not want to rely on European imports, there will be room for technology such as vertical farms that allow hot-weather vegetables and fruit to be grown closer to home. The City will have to switch to designing financial products for a world market as it gets frozen out of European ones.
The list goes on and on. In each case, markets will open up as government and private companies work out they can’t rely on Europe for supplies, or should at least have emergency back-ups in place. The EU is turning increasingly aggressive towards its neighbours.
In a crisis, as with vaccines, it will lash out, and impose export controls. That, of course, is up to them. But it creates a huge potential space for British companies. The UK will be far more self-reliant going forward, and far more plugged into trading with Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. Whether that is an improvement in the medium-term is open to question.
In truth, both the EU and the UK would be better off with completely free trade, mutual recognition of each other’s standards, and co-operation when problems emerge. But that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
In the meantime British companies should take the “Ursula dividend” and run, seizing the chance to create alternatives, and building new industries in the process.
And the people with new jobs making vaccines in Stockton and Livingston should raise a glass to the blonde lady in Brussels – they wouldn’t have that work without her."
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/04/04/ursula-dividend-shot-arm-uk-vaccine-industry/
