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Politics, like life, is full of ironies large and small. Boris Johnson, the great grandson of a Turkish politician, led a Vote Leave campaign that infamously and falsely suggested the UK wanted Turkey to join the EU. Johnson himself said that he didn’t want a situation where 77 million Turks could “come here without any checks at all”. The Turkey scare was one of the “baseball bats” that persuaded voters to back Brexit, Dominic Cummings has since said.
Today, as Johnson joined others in giving a cautious welcome to the good news on Pfizer’s new Covid vaccine, there was a Turkish link of which the PM may not have been aware. Pfizer’s key partner on the vaccine was a German firm BioNTech, which was founded by a husband and wife team whose parents migrated from Turkey.
Ugur Sahin, whose dad worked at a Ford factory in Cologne, and wife Oezlem Tuereci, are described as a “dream team” who are so devoted to their work that they spent part of their wedding day in the lab. It was Sahin who had a light-bulb moment in January when he read a Chinese research paper on the new coronavirus and realised he could adapt anti-cancer drug tech to an anti-viral vaccine.
Reacting to the news, Joe Biden was already sounding like a president. “I congratulate the brilliant women and men who helped produce this breakthrough and give us such cause for hope,” he said, while stressing that the results were still uncertain and wearing a mask was the best weapon for Americans right now.
Johnson reverted instead to the language of one of his Telegraph columns, talking about “the distant bugle of scientific cavalry coming over the hill”, saying “that toot” was louder but still some way off. The PM may or may not be aware that tooting a bugle is street slang for snorting cocaine, but he seemed to have temporarily weaned himself off the drug of Covid boosterism
His line that “I’ve been very careful to not get people’s hopes up” may have come as a shock to anyone who saw his “unlockdown” press conference in July, complete with his talk of a return to “significant normality” by Christmas. In one spectacular self-own, he stressed the importance of “not being mentally sidetracked by a sudden surge of optimism”.
Deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam did utter the word Christmas today, but was careful to say he was “not yet certain” but was “hopeful” that “some” people could benefit from the vaccine before the festive season. However, he stressed it would take more than 40 days for it to start working, was unclear if it affected asymptomatic transmission and it would be a “colossal mistake” for anyone to drop their guard against Covid this winter.
With time running out for a trade deal with the EU, Brexit and Covid are both on Johnson’s mind right now. The heavy defeat in the Lords for his Internal Market Bill’s plan to break international law will put the PM into a tricky spot with the Biden team (and peers’ unusual decision to vote during a committee stage was meant to do just that). If he dares resurrect it in the Commons, he risks incurring the wrath of not merely Brussels but Washington.
No.10 again trotted out the line that the UK would prosper with an “Australia-style” outcome on Brexit. Tonight, in a withering assessment of Johnson’s record, Sir John Major used a speech to pick up on such boosterism. “False optimism is deceit by another name,” the former PM said. “Suddenly, we are no longer an irreplaceable bridge between Europe and America. We are now less relevant to them both.” Ouch.
Still, while the PM has been burnt by his own rash predictions of sunlit uplands on Covid, others may be encouraged by several developments today. Professor John Bell’s World at One interview will have given hope to many that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is really on the way. Just as relevant are plans to finally roll out mass testing for all NHS staff from next week. The government’s decision to send out 600,000 rapid tests to 50 Directors of Public Health across England this week is another cause for hope too.
If the government can now reduce the self-isolation period (and increase cash support for those who quarantine, as I’ve mentioned before), if the public warms to mass testing in Liverpool and elsewhere, it could yet steady the ship of state in the second Covid wave. Judging by today, the PM may also have learned his lesson of overpromising and underdelivering. If he can reverse that formulation, it will be welcomed by many.