https://fullfact.org/health/keir-starmer-european-medicines-agency/ refers.
Prime minister Johnson in his cheap crack at PMQs this week implied that losing membership of the European Medicines Agency, formerly based in London was a good thing. Leader of the opposition-for-the-sake-of-opposition Keir Starmer, by falsely denying that he had ever publicly regretted the move, went along with that.
Perhaps Johnson really did see the EMA as a dictatorial body in which the UK had no say, rather than the devolved advisory agency which it is. (By leaving it, the UK can no longer share the burden of evaluating human and veterinary medicines and will have to duplicate the EMA's effort in future.) Johnson never did have much interest in detail. But there should be no such excuse for Starmer. He has clearly completed the switch, begun under Corbyn, of Labour from supporting the EU to becoming a Europhobic party.
The vaccine issue is a red herring. There was never any compulsion on member states to rely exclusively on a common EU approach to purchasing as Hungary has recently shown in respect of the Russian and Chinese products.
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