Vaccines success is an opportunity for Keir Starmer to wean his party off its reflex opposition to the private sector

The Labour leader has praised the vaccines effort, and especially the NHS staff working on it, but perhaps he should be praising the virtues of public-private partnerships and state intervention, too, writes John Rentoul

Keir Starmer, who usually looks worried, takes part in Prime Minister’s Questions by video (Reuters TV)

It has been a tricky week for Keir Starmer. Two things Labour Party members believe above all are that multinational drugs companies are bad and that the European Union is good. But now, not only is international capitalism riding to our rescue by providing vaccines, but our government is better able to take advantage of the help because we are out of the EU. 

Yes, I know it is more complicated than that. For one thing, the success so far of Britain’s vaccination programme is not down to the profit motive alone. The big drugs companies work in partnerships with governments and the public sector. Kate Bingham, the former boss of the vaccines taskforce, has been using public money to “pick winners” with more verve (and success) than Tony Benn in his heyday. One of the biggest winners, AstraZeneca, has been working with a public institution, Oxford University, to produce its vaccine. It is supplying it at cost and licensing it to India. And the injections in Britain are being done by Clement Attlee’s great collectivist creation, the NHS. 

It is awkward, though, for those Remainers who turned into Rejoiners the moment we left the EU, a year ago on Sunday, that we have used our departure to such benign effect. I know that, in EU law, there was nothing to stop other EU countries buying up vaccines and giving them emergency approval, but none of them did. They felt bound by the demands of “solidarity” to pool their efforts and trust to the dynamism of the European Commission.