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

I'm Cindy Yu and I'm joined by Katie Balls and James Forsyth.

So the long-awaited European Medicines Agency ruling on the AstraZeneca jab has come out today.

And Katie, surprise, surprise, what does it say?

The Oxygenica vaccine is safe.

Following lots of reports about concern over blood clots, and the EMA have come out and they said that the vaccine is safe, it is effective, and ultimately get jabbing.

And that comes obviously after heightening of rhetoric.

You've actually seen the UK government respond a bit more this week in terms of what

Dominic Rav has said in response.

And I think there is frustration on the UK side that the language and the various interventions by the EU is,

well, a could, but two is beginning to have a bit of an effect in making people a bit more vaccine hesitant.

Now, in the UK, it's still not, I think, seen as a drastic thing.

We're very pro-vaccine nation.

But you are hearing anecdotally doctors quotes in the papers and doctors saying

that they are having people due for the vaccine calling, particularly if they have a history of blood clots

to get clarity on this. So I think the fact that this has come out today should hopefully

move the story along and to the point that we start to move to a better conversation about

how people should be getting

the jab rather than what's going on of all these stories.

James, does this leave the European nations and their various politicians in a bit of an awkward

spot because of, as Katie says, the escalating tensions in recent weeks?

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