SNP ministers, MPs, and MSPs said the UK’s decision to opt-out of the EU vaccine procurement and distribution scheme was “lunacy“, “irresponsible“, “inept“, “idiotic“, and a decision made by “Brexiteer buffoons” that “will cost lives“. Given the chance to atone for the party’s embarrassing stance, yesterday MP Philippa Whitford flailed in the line of straight questioning.

Instead of showing contrition for backing the disastrous scheme like Labour’s Shadow Europe Minister Catherine West, Whitford chose to sing the virtues of it, pointing to a German poll explaining “while people are annoyed the rollout has been slow, there is still support for the EU solidarity approach“. Even EU Patron Saint Guy Verhofstat yesterday called this approach “a fiasco”…

Bizarrely, Whitford then went on to say that the UK got more vaccines by virtue of being a big country that was not in the EU scheme.

“The big countries like France Germany and the UK if we had still been there would have bought up all the vaccines which is exactly what we’ve done [outside of the EU], driven the price up and therefore other countries in Europe and beyond simply wouldn’t get access”

Making the case for Brexit and staying in the UK better than any Tory has recently…