The Anglo-Swedish company, AstraZeneca, collaborated with researchers at Oxford University to create one of the early vaccines to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Back in 2014, two years before the Brexit referendum, AstraZeneca’s board successfully rebuffed an $118 billion takeover bid by the US pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, which has developed the other major vaccine for Covid-19. The then David Cameron-led Conservative Party government supported the deal, while the former Labour leader then in Opposition, Ed Miliband, viewed it as an attempt by an American pharmaceutical giant to cut down its tax liability at the cost of the United Kingdom’s scientific and research base.

In addition to the political point about sovereignty and the taking back of control that has been made ad nauseum, Brexit is also about a particular trajectory taken by British capitalism since the Thatcherite years. This has entailed privileging capital in circulation over manufacturing, creating an economy dangerously lopsided towards the services sector that is further skewed by the preponderant role of finance in the UK’s economy.

Ardent Brexiteers are celebrating the rapidity of the UK’s vaccine roll-out as one of the early signs of success of the UK leaving the European Union. An Anglo-Swedish company collaborating with Oxford University researchers prompted the British government to put the British flag on the vaccine’s packaging. The juvenile character of the Boris Johnson government was on display, once again, when the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, bragged that the UK was a better country than all the others because of which it was ahead in the race.

The EU’s vaccine roll-out has been disparagingly characterized as a slow-moving tanker in comparison to the UK moving ahead like a speedboat by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, herself. To add to its vaccine woes, the EU was left in an embarrassing situation when it was involved in an unseemly row with AstraZeneca over reduced supplies of its vaccine to the EU. The EU threatened the invocation of Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol that would have prevented the entry of supplies of the vaccine from the Republic of Ireland into Britain via Northern Ireland.

This rash move brought up the question of the hard border on Ireland that the tortuous Brexit negotiations did so much to avoid, with the EU beating a hasty retreat after criticism by the Republic of Ireland’s Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. In Europe, doubts have been raised about the efficacy of the AstraZeneca vaccine, especially after fears of blood clotting. However, the European Medicine Agency has declared that the vaccine is safe.

The UK may well be in an advantageous position as far as the vaccine roll-out is concerned on account of its quick decision-making, the formidable nature of its scientific research base and the global reputation of its universities. Ironically, Brexit threatens to damage the very sectors of the British economy — scientific research and cultural exports, for instance — that have been its success stories.

The Covid-19 pandemic as well as vaccine nationalism seem to have exposed the bitterness that characterizes Britain’s ties with the EU after Brexit.