This week in Brexitland, June 15, 2023

Debunking the two main “Brexit benefits” myths: the Covid vaccine rollout and Ukraine policy

Whenever Brexiters are backed into a corner and asked to name any benefits from Brexit so far, they reach for three things. One is the myth that because we left the EU, we were able to roll out the Covid vaccine in a way that saved thousands of British lives. The second is the myth that being outside of the EU allowed the UK to help Ukraine, militarily and otherwise, in a way it would not have been able to as a member of the European Union. The third is the “Brexit is good because we’re free now” nonsense, which is so idiotic it needs no further discussion.

The first two myths are still going strong and sound at least plausible to people who aren’t paying insane amounts of attention to British politics. Which is why I feel the need to debunk both of them, here and now. Feel free, obviously, to use any of the information below when arguing with Brexity friends, colleagues and relatives.

The Vaccine Rollout myth

Here’s the Brexiter theory: when the Covid vaccine was offered to all adults in the UK in 2020, being outside of the EU helped the UK immensely. Instead of having to wait around and go according to the speed dictated by the EU’s vaccine programme, a newly nimble, post-Brexit Britain could work much faster in rolling out the vaccine in a way tailor-made for the UK alone. Who knows how many British lives were saved as a result.

There are three massive problems with this as a theory. One is that the vaccine was first given to the British public on December 8, 2020. Those of you who understand what the “implementation period” was will know that we were still in it at that time. In other words, although we technically left the European Union on January 31, 2020, until January 1, 2021, once the new trade deal between the UK and the EU had kicked in, nothing changed. We were still technically in the single market and customs union throughout 2020, subject to all the rules of the EU, while the deal was being negotiated. That’s at least part of the reason why the UK government was in such a rush to get the trade deal done - so that it could fully leave the EU and put the “implementation period” behind them.

This is a great demonstration of the fact that EU member states were under no obligation to submit to the EU vaccine rollout programme as opposed to implementing their own. The UK was still subject to all EU rules throughout 2020, and yet put in place its own vaccine rollout, separate from the EU’s. Therefore, we didn’t need to leave the EU in order to have had the vaccine rollout go the way it did in 2020. It is not a “Brexit benefit” for that reason alone.

Yet there is more to say here, amazingly enough. Another point to make is that it turns out that still technically being an EU member throughout the implementation period of 2020 might have been of help to the UK’s vaccine rollout. There was a lot of data sharing between member states (and the UK, who was in a strange in-out phase of membership) that turns out was helpful to the UK in implementing its own rollout. It seems that still being within the structures of the EU could actually have been slightly helpful to the UK’s vaccine rollout.

The third problem with the “Brexit saved us from Covid” idea is that it is now questionable how effective the UK’s programme was when compared to the EU’s. It seems to have got off to a quicker start in the UK, that much is true, but there were other aspects of the way the EU did things where there is at least some medical opinion suggesting that over the longer term, the EU rollout was more effective. I am now getting into an area that is certainly not my expertise and I don’t want to make out like I know more about vaccine rollouts and their efficiency than I do (the Covid period launched enough amateur epidemiologists on us all for one lifetime). All I’m saying is that there seems to be arguments for and against the UK’s rollout being better than the EU’s. It’s not even an open and shut case, in other words.

The Ukraine myth

To remind you, this one is the idea that if we had still been an EU member, the UK government could not have intervened to the level that it has in Ukraine. Taking this myth one step further, it is sometimes asserted that Putin would have taken over Ukraine by now, had it not been for Brexit and of course, what Boris Johnson did in assisting Zelensky in his defence of Ukraine.

The Brexiters like to cite the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) to try and make the argument that were we still in the EU, CFSP would have stopped the UK from helping Ukraine as much as we have, particularly in terms of arms. This is obviously bullshit and I can prove it to you with only one word: Iraq.

Know how long the CFSP has been in place? Since 1993. It was introduced at the very transition from the EEC to the EU, right at the birth of the European Union. Like a lot of things within the EU’s structures, the CFSP has always been nebulous - and this is at least partly by design. It’s one of those things that seeks “ever closer union” without creating a roadmap as to how that might happen. How are you going to get UK and France, two UN Security Council permanent members, both with an outward looking and sometimes aggressive foreign policy outlook, to agree to the exact same things as Germany, a country that, for understandable historical reasons, is extremely shy militarily? You aren’t - and that’s why the CFSP is mostly totemistic.

Great examples of this abound: in 2003, the UK joined the USA in invading Iraq. No other EU country was involved (Poland was, but it had yet to become an EU member). In fact, most EU countries were vocally against the invasion taking place. Yet the UK, while very much an EU member, went its own way and put boots on the ground in Iraq. How could it have done this if it was tied into an EU-wide foreign policy agreement, of the kind that would have supposedly stopped us in 2022 from helping Ukraine? The answer, again, is because the CFSP is a long way from binding in any real sense on individual members state’s foreign policy.

2011, Libya is another great example. The Germans didn’t take part as usual; nor did the Swedes, who are famously pacifist on the world stage. Yet they are both EU members and there is no genuine movement within Sweden or Germany to leave the bloc. Sweden hasn’t been sucked up into a rash of wars because of CFSP because that’s not how it works.

If the UK had still been in the EU when Putin attacked Ukraine, we would have helped them to precisely the same level as we did as a post-Brexit country. Still being an EU member would not have affected anything we did in 2022 and 2023 in relation to Ukraine, not even to the tune of one bullet or care package.

All right then, so why do Brexiters go on and on about these supposed “Brexit benefits” if there is no substance to them? Because there is nothing else to talk about in terms of benefits from Brexit, and the two above sound plausible, at least until you start to deconstruct them. When you have nothing, you reach for anything you can get your hands on.

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