Late yesterday afternoon was mired in political farce when the FCO boss Simon McDonald suggested that Britain’s decision not to take part in the EU’s PPE procurement scheme was a “political” one, in direct contradiction to the Government’s given explanation of an email communications failure. Hancock immediately denied the claim by McDonald and hours later the top mandarin issued a correction stating he was wrong and it was, after all, not a political decision. The writers of Yes Minister would have rejected such a scenario…

Regardless of the merits of UK non-participation at first in a scheme being run by a foreign political body we are no longer members of, it is on form for the media to portray theoretical participation in the scheme as a land of milk and honey, when weeks on from the start of the crisis, the EU scheme has not delivered a single piece of PPE equipment to a single member state.

Not only are countries like Italy and Spain reaching the end stages of their Coronavirus pandemic having not seen PPE help from the EU, according to the Irish Medical Times, on the 24th March an EU Commission spokesman said, “The equipment should be available two weeks after the Member States sign the contracts with the bidders, which they should do very rapidly,”. If the UK Government missed a deadline this badly, you can be sure the media would be canning them…
untrammelled facts from Guido