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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy U

and I'm joined by James Forsy and Katie Bors. So today Joe Biden will be formally invited into

the G7 in a Zoom call. James, can you tell us what the

world leaders are going to be talking about? Well, this is the first meeting of the UK's G7 presidency.

It's a leaders meeting, albeit virtual. Technically, any leader can raise any topic they want,

but I suspect the conversation is going to be dominated by

vaccines and there's question about how do you get vaccines to developing countries, you know,

very much picking up on your cover piece, Cindy, which is there is clearly huge amounts of work

being done by Russia and China to try and use their vaccines to expand their spheres of influence.

How does the Western world response to us? Now, the UK is saying it's going to donate

about three quarters or so of its spare vaccines once it's vaccinated the UK population

to the developing world. Emmanuel Macron, in a, I think given that he's given the interview

to the Financial Times, it was obviously meant to be a kind of funder stealing intervention, has suggested that, you know, they should start donating 5% of their supplies from now.

I don't think that idea is going to work in that I think leaders will want to vaccinate their own populations first, but I think it shows how sensitive this question, which you've written about so

compellingly in the Sweet's magazine, is becoming, which is, the Western world is waking up,

the democratic world is waking up to the way in which China and Russia are using their vaccines.

Yes, and Katie, Boris Johnson is trying to lead the way on this discussion. What is the UK position?

So where Macron is talking about 5% of the current vaccine intake, I think that the strong sense you get from ministers

involved with this is that they do don't want to give away vaccines until they have been able to

offer a vaccine not just to the most vulnerable, but ideally everyone in the country

in terms of the adult population. And I think this goes to a desire by the UK to almost try and

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