Matthew Lynn Matthew Lynn

Boris is right: ‘greed’ did give us the Covid vaccine

(Getty images)

Boris Johnson might have started back-pedalling furiously. He might have tried to dismiss it as an off-the-cuff comment. And the spin doctor might have preferred it to have remained private. Even so, the Prime Minister was surely right when he told MPs last night that ‘greed’ and ‘capitalism’ gave us the Covid-19 vaccine. And rather than backing away from the remarks, the PM should be doubling down on them. He was spot on. Free enterprise and the multinational corporation are getting us out of this mess, and we need to talk about that a lot more than we do.

The pioneering MRNA technology used by BioNTech and Moderna was funded by Wall Street through years of hopeless losses

It was typical Boris. At a meeting of Tory backbenchers he launched into a robust defence of the market. ‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends,’ he said.

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