With

SO, the first shots have been fired in the Brexit War of Vaccination 2021.

The first salvo came from the UK in its refusal to give full diplomatic status to the new EU ambassador, a churlish snub but causing only superficial wounds. This was followed by an unexpected and ill-advised attack by the EU on the seriously weak flank of the Northern Ireland Protocol, resulting in a swift withdrawal to higher ground.

The response from the UK was more than a storm in a vial: it was a jingoistic howl of protest which exposed four years of flawed negotiations which only took a few months to unravel in Northern Ireland.

The nationalistic battle for the vaccines (“they’re taking our jabs”) is now well under way, with Israel and the UAE leading the charge in the successful administering of the vaccine. The embarrassing triumphalism of UK ministers still leaves the UK well behind those countries despite ordering enough dosage for each person several times over.

Therein lies the problem. The People’s Vaccine Alliance last week reported that in 67 poorer nations just one in 10 people will receive a vaccine by the end of 2021.

Yet in the economically developed world an unseemly rush to obtain as many doses as possible has enabled some rich countries to bathe in it.

The greed is breathtaking, and counterproductive. Nations representing just 14% of the world’s population now own more than half of the most promising vaccines. What an opportunity has been missed to co-operate and roll out a global vaccination campaign for all parts of the world.

We can vaccinate out of lockdown but something more radical is needed to control the virus worldwide. With so much global travel, all it will do is come back to bite us.