How are you enjoying the vaccine wars? The EU’s meltdown at the UK is one of those rows that turns you into the grimace-face emoji. I’ve now held that expression for three straight days, presumably along with the other 500 million-odd citizens who just want to get home but whose parents are fighting on the pub floor. Guys … please? PLEASE.
There is a true coach-crash quality to the EU’s reaction to being outfoxed by the UK on vaccine procurement. The commission’s pram has been dramatically emptied of all its toys. It’s like watching an endlessly patient and mild-mannered social studies teacher finally lose it and head-butt a pupil for beating him in a quiz. Oh, sir … I appreciate you’ve had to deal with some awful behaviour from this particular individual over the past few years, but I’m afraid … this is not acceptable. Time to put your corduroy jacket, your peace lily and your idealism in a cardboard box and make the final journey out of the staff car park. Right after the policeman has held your head down so you don’t bang it while being helped into the back seat.
As for the outfoxer, I offer a 21-syringe salute to Kate Bingham, whose brilliantly performing vaccine taskforce contrasts dramatically with the 10 months of total ignominy that has characterised the rest of the government response to the pandemic. Had Kate been on the Titanic, I feel like she’d have made sure there was enough ballroom decor for everyone to float on, probably while Tony Blair popped up to explain that it was actually fine for Rose and Jack to share the door, and would only result in a 4% increase in the chances of either of them drowning. Arguably it wouldn’t have been the same movie, but in the end that’s the Academy’s call.
For now, it’s hard not to wince at reports the EU could block millions of doses of coronavirus vaccine from entering Britain. Let’s hope this is a conflict that de-escalates in a hurry, and not the shape of things to come. After the past few years around the globe, it’s such a tribute to the human spirit that we can still discover new types of nationalism. The latest variant is vaccine nationalism, which – like all the other nationalisms – is grim and ends badly.
Vaccine-wise, it behoves the haves to act graciously towards the have-nots. No doubt history will judge the merits of the Treaty of AstraZeneca, which the EU seems to regard as the most incendiary dotted line since Versailles. For now, thank heavens for the quiet dignity of Her Majesty’s press, as Britain’s front pages have spent much of the week blaring out observations such as “ANOTHER SHOT IN THE ARM FOR BRITAIN”, “EU WHAT?”, “UNION VACC”, and “NO, EU CAN’T HAVE OUR JABS”. At the current rate of triumphalism, we’re only days off “WE HOPE EU ALL DIE OF BUREAUCRACY” and “FINE, WE’LL GIVE YOU OUR VACCINE SCRAPS BUT WE’RE ANNEXING FRANCE AS A HOLIDAY HOME”.
Naturally, we all have to play our part. Despite the German government reportedly being set to refuse the AstraZeneca jab for use in the over-65s, I myself have taken the axe to a lighthearted joke about saving Germans in the higher age categories, having just discovered that the second world war in fact ended a full SEVENTY FIVE YEARS AGO, and that there’s just a small chance a gossamer quip about that nation’s nonagenarians is neither fair, helpful or even tasteful. Which, as any regular readers will know, are the three absolute lodestars of this column.
If only the government’s wins were not being assaulted from its own benches. Consider New Forest West MP Desmond Swayne, who really is the opposite of a vaccine success story. He’s the opposite of a cerebral success story, all told, having closed 2019 defending his use of blackface, and ended 2020 claiming to an influential anti-lockdown and anti-vaxx group that NHS Covid figures “appear to have been manipulated”. ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
Hardly a surprise that Desmond has become quite the hero to antivaxxers and “Covid sceptics”. This week the campaign group Hope Not Hate revealed that last November Swayne opted to appear on the notorious Richie Allen Show, an online radio programme that regularly hosts antisemites and conspiracy cranks, and featured a Holocaust denier on the very same episode.
Despite being asked to apologise and retract his entirely inaccurate and dangerous nonsense by both Michael Gove and Priti Patel this week, Desmond has blithely refused. As he put it while appearing on the radio show of fellow lockdown septic Julia Hartley-Brewer: “We are getting very close to thought crime.” No we’re not, you daft snowflake. We’re not even in the same landmass as thought crime. We have, however, pulled in at the station of malevolent imbecility, where you have left the train in the company of a Holocaust denier, Piers Corbyn and people who think Bill Gates got the jab so he can track himself. In short, you’re a Windsor-knotted, contrast-collared conspiracy frotter with a grasp of science inferior to even Gwyneth Paltrow’s and sideburns that read like a come-and-get-me-plea to the sex offenders’ register. I hope I’ve got close to thought crime there – if not, hit me up. I have more.
Bizarrely, Swayne still has the Tory whip. The prime minister expelled his own hero Winston Churchill’s grandson from the Conservative party for simply voting against him on Brexit, but has kept this New Forest show pony even as the latter willingly becomes a hero to the most dangerous anti-vaxxers at a time of deadly pandemic. Johnson should get rid. Honestly, if you can’t spaff an eightieth of your majority on a guy so iniquitously undermining the nation, there’s something rather wrong.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist