Latest updates: Boris Johnson to speak to EU leaders including Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron about vaccine export issues
- EU export ban would delay UK Covid vaccine drive by two months
- ‘A class act’: Chris Whitty, the calm authority amid the Covid crisis
- AZ vaccine 79% effective with no increased blood clot risk – US trial
- TUC says Covid vaccine efforts hindered by lack of paid time off for jab
- Coronavirus – latest global updates
Sir Keir Starmer is holding his LBC phone-in. Nick Ferrari, the presenter, starts by asking about last night’s rioting in Bristol.
Starmer says what happened was “inexcusable” and “completely unacceptable”.
Good morning. One of the benefits of Brexit, its supporters claimed, was that it might improve the UK’s relations with the EU, because Britain would be transformed from a surly tenant of the EU’s to a helpful neighbour. “So I say again directly to our EU friends and partners, I think this deal means a new stability and a new certainty in what has sometimes been a fractious and difficult relationship,” Boris Johnson said on 24 December, when the trade deal with the EU has been agreed. Three months later the opposite seems to be happening, and this week the vaccine dispute is in danger of escalating.
As my colleague Daniel Boffey reports in his overnight story, the EU has revived its threat to ban vaccine exports to the UK, which could put back the UK’s vaccine programme by two months.
Related: EU export ban would delay UK Covid vaccine drive by two months
What we’re hearing at the moment is some speculation, some conjecture, an element of rhetoric. But what is actually important is that the EU and no country should follow vaccine nationalism or vaccine protectionism.
We expect the European Union to stick by their commitments and I’m sure the prime minister will be in contact with European counterparts – he speaks to European counterparts regularly- but I don’t think this debate is helpful to anybody.
I don’t think it is very helpful to speculate at the moment. I don’t think this is a helpful line to go down.
