It’s a familiar story.
Both the UK and the EU were trying to get a COVID vaccine program off the ground.
The UK (who only just split with the EU last year), came up with what they called the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Their attitude was, this might work, this might not, either way, we need to give it a punt.
And punt they did.
Whereas the EU’s approach was far more cautious. They had 27 member States to keep happy, so all the t’s needed to be crossed and all the i’s dotted. All the boxes had to be ticked off before proceeding.
It’s not hard to see what happened next.
At the time of writing, Britain is miles ahead of the EU. Whereas the EU situation is a complete mess, turning into a political dumpster fire.
The Brits needed to get something done quickly, in order to do so, they allowed themselves a degree of risk. Whereas the EU wanted all their ducks to be in a row before proceeding.
It’s not that the Brits are suddenly geniuses, and the EU folk are all stupid. No, it was a cultural thing. The slow, bureaucratic EU way is fine for negotiating grain exports or fishing quotas between the Member States, but when actual action and results are required, not so much. Whereas the British didn’t care about consensus, they just needed it to work.
An aligned thought is that the British have been very good at maintaining a sense of compliance, and understanding of what it means to be “British”- something that we have lost in the USA, and that is impossible to achieve in a Union of 27 states. This comes in very handy when crises arise.
Whatever culture you have, it’s going to be good for some things, and less good for others. Plan accordingly.
