Why I won’t invest in Deliveroo

‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism — because of greed, my friends.’ So Boris Johnson told his backbenchers last week, though he immediately muttered ‘Forget I said that’ while aides tried to explain it as a joke on the chief whip, who was munching a cheese and pickle sandwich at the time. Whatever, the PM’s gaffe makes a neat text for a short Easter sermon.

The fact is that ‘capitalism’ — the mustering of vast private-sector resources to bring lab-tested potions to mass production in record time — has indeed delivered a triumph, in combination with university science, a smart Whitehall taskforce, military logistics and NHS networks. And both the capital and the people involved deserve appropriate rewards, because that’s how capitalism has generated progress and prosperity throughout the modern age.

And yes, ‘greed’ is sometimes capitalism’s rocket fuel, especially in finance. But not in this case — in which AstraZeneca is providing vaccines at cost and all major participants, I suspect, are motivated far more by the long-term rewards of shared success than by money.