Lost Horizon
Do you think that the value of the Horizon programme to the UK is worth more the costs of the NIP?
Frankly it seems like a no brainer to me, the North Ireland Protocol is good for the NI economy- it keeps it in the Single Market. Any red tape involved would have to be used at a border between Ireland and Northern Ireland anyway, so the costs are inbuilt into Brexit.
However, the Horizon programme is vital to the UK and the PM’s ambition to make the country a “science superpower”. The phrase is, like so many Prime Ministerial utterings these days, meaningless grandstanding, with no policy or programme worth the name, but Horizon is still vital to the UK’s future.
The Russell group of leading universities certainly think so, they have written to the PM urging him to get them back into Horizon asap. Pointing out that they have 1,400 European Research Council grants worth €1.8bn between them, which is “more than the whole of France”.
The government is accusing the EU of politicising the Horizon programme and the EU is certainly refusing to let British researchers join until the British government starts implementing the Northern Ireland protocol, rather than threatening to tear it up.
Westminster is also proposing its own fund to replace Horizon, the irony that it could have exactly what it wants if it only kept its word is lost on this government. The fact that Horizon alone is almost certainly more important to the UK than Northern Ireland’s status, should make them think what even a mild trade war with the EU would do.
But they won’t worry about that, they can blame Brussels.
The damage from losing out on Horizon has already started and will continue. It will be slow, steady and costly— the UK will lose scientists, researchers, scientific progress and growth. The EU will gain as a result.
All because this Prime Minister is a liar who cannot ever admit he is a liar and whose cabinet refuse to defenestrate him because they are political pygmies.
Horizon is one of the few EU programmes that the UK signed up to in the Brexit negotiations because it was so obviously a great idea and in the UK’s interest to stay in.
Managing to mess up even that took some doing, but this government has managed it with ease.
I am taking a few days off from this blog, I will be back next week.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.