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Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Isbar Hardman and this is the Sunday roundup.

The European Union's attempted vaccine procurement has not been its finest hour.

Concerns about lack of supply across the continent

led the EU Commission to try to block Pfizer and AstraZeneca

from exporting their jabs to the UK.

After a backlash, the EU was forced to make a climb down.

Andrew Maher spoke to the International Trade Secretary,

Liz Truss, about the debacle.

Can you absolutely guarantee that the flow of Pfizer vaccines into this country will not be disrupted?

Yes, I can. The Prime Minister has spoken to the President of the European Commission.

She has assured him that there will be no disruption of contracts

that we have with any producer in the EU. And that's a really important principle. And

furthermore, we are absolutely confident that our vaccine program is on track to vaccinate

the most vulnerable by the 15th of February, to vaccinate the over 50s by the spring

and all adults by the autumn. And I think this is a huge success. It's been driven by Kate Bingham

and the vaccine task force who've done a terrific job in getting those 367 million doses in the pipeline for the UK population.

The EU had inflamed matters by announcing that it would invoke Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol,

which would have introduced the kind of border checks that years of Brexit negotiations had been aimed at avoiding.

...