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Willie Hutton just is such a card, isn’t he?

The defenders of her and the commission are wrong. Both the dilatory procurement and risk-averse delivery strategy were self-made disasters, originating in a centralised federal mindset that does not work.
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The commission should never have arrogated vaccine procurement and distribution to itself as if it were a Soviet planner. It had neither the expertise nor experience. It should have stuck firmly to a tried and tested social market approach, delegating the response to member states while ensuring there was no bidding war, along with a robust system for intra-EU vaccine sharing.

If only Von der Leyen had trusted Europe to be its social market self, with a proper balance between speed and equity and with the commission as steward and referee, the EU would now be awash with vaccines.

If only the EU hadn’t acted like the EU then the EU would have worked!

14 thoughts on “Willie Hutton just is such a card, isn’t he?”

  1. …Europe to be its social market self, with a proper balance between speed and equity and with the commission as steward and referee…

    Does Europe or the EU have a social market personality, or indeed any personality? How does it establish a balance between speed and equity and act as steward and referee if the response is delegated to the member states? Poor old Hutton is tearing himself apart and his English is suffering as well: “The defenders of her and the commission” – awful!

  2. Replace crooked cow Arsula with vapid traitorous bighead Willie and maybe he can put the EU out of business altogether.

  3. So Much For Subtlety

    If only Von der Leyen had trusted Europe to be its social market self, with a proper balance between speed and equity and with the commission as steward and referee, the EU would now be awash with vaccines.

    Sure but alas we do not have this fantasy EU. We only have the real EU. Where the lovers are Swiss.

    But Little Willie can dream

  4. Has Hutton always recognised the ineffectiveness of a centralised control/management approach? Where did I get the impression that he never has before?

  5. Her and the Commission’s excuse (h/t TMB) is about to collapse. The charge was that the AZ vaccine had not been sufficiently tested on the 65+ age group and so was dangerously experimental.
    We have now experimented on about 5 million oldsters with no ill effects so far, and it seems to work in reducing infection and fatalities. Well done those 5 million! Now the EU can roll out the vaccine with confidence.
    If they had enough, and if their delivery arrangements were adequate.

  6. @ rhoda klapp
    If there have been no post-vaccination deaths in the UK then it must be largely due to the lockdown reducing traffic as there were 1870 road accident deaths in the year to June 2019, the last full year before lockdown. That is about 3 per week for 5 million.

  7. With the commission as steward and referee the EU would now be awash with vaccines *that didn’t work*.
    HMG placed orders for vaccines that it thought had a a good chance of working; the EU placed orders largely for political reasons.

  8. … but don’t you understand, Tim? Hutton’s position is that if only the UK had not left the EU, then the argument for a sensible, decentralised COVID policy could have been won. The excess deaths and loss of output in Continental Europe attributable to the resulting policy errors are one more malign consequence of the criminally reckless activism of the Brexiteers!

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