Toby Neal: EU is shown up by farce of vaccination no-show

Hold-ups at ports, unexpected charges on international trading transactions, and Scottish fish not reaching the table – but those are not the only problems now facing the European Union.

Since British voters decided to give EU leaders a free run in marching ever onwards towards a United States of Europe, the disaster of the coronavirus pandemic has left the super state looking not so super.

In fact it may turn out to be the biggest crisis facing the bloc in its entire history.

This is an organisation promoting a common foreign policy, a common currency, ultimately its own army, and a common vaccine procurement policy.

At the start of the pandemic the EU was so glacially slow in coming up with guidelines for member states that by the time it did issue them they were irrelevant as member states had not bothered waiting and had done their own thing anyway.

Now you could say that that showed that member states retain their sovereignty within the EU, but it jars with the EU's chosen direction of travel, and raises the question of whether the EU should stick to doing what it does well, which is being a capitalist protectionist cartel, and forget about those United States of Europe ambitions.

Great at trade among wealthy nations, but rubbish at crises in which it is prone to come apart when the pressure is really on.

In a crisis it is useful to have the agility to move fast and adapt to changing situations, and the EU's centralised procurement process has shown the disadvantages of acting on behalf of the 27 member states.

According to people who know about these things much better than I do, the EU's current troubles with the vaccine are as a result of it being three months slower to act than the UK, and having the bad luck to back the wrong horse in the vaccine trials.

EU talk of banning vaccine exports to the UK isn't a good look. Perfidious Albion isn't to blame for its troubles this time.

And does any EU country have a better test, track and trace system than the UK? That is a genuine question by the way, as I don't know the answer.

Meanwhile Boris Johnson has ventured north of the border into the land of Nicola, Queen of Scots.

If the EU is looking for leadership, it should make sure that it has left the light on for Nicola, whose handling of the Covid crisis has, for unfathomable reasons, come in for fawning admiration.

My guess is that that fawning admiration is not rooted in anything she has done, but in her status as a totemic figure of Scottish independence ambitions.

The Sturge is very keen on having another referendum, having lost the last one. But one thing you never hear the SNP saying, or being asked, is whether they would allow the Scots a referendum on EU membership.

The rationale for holding a new independence referendum is that circumstances have changed greatly since the last one in 2014.

Well if that's true for the independence referendum, it's also true for the 2016 Brexit referendum in which Scotland wasn't even mentioned on the ballot paper, let alone an independent Scotland.

And in 2016 the issue was completely different – that is, Scots were voting on whether the United Kingdom as a whole should remain in the EU, not whether an independent Scotland should rejoin the EU.

A new referendum would allow the SNP to give some much-needed clarity on what currency it would propose to use, and if it were the euro, to explain the austerity measures it would impose on the Scottish people to address its public sector deficit, which it would need to do if it were to qualify for euro membership.

Great TV moments to recall

To the great roll-on-the-floor television moments, we now have another in the pantheon.

There was of course the elephant on Blue Peter. Almost any episode of Fawlty Towers. Todd Carty's ice skating excursion.

And now Raj Bisram's magic trick demonstrated the other day on Would I Lie To You?

My favourite of all wasn't on the telly, and when I tell you what it is it will destroy my street cred, but as I haven't got any I don't care.

It's a Norman Wisdom film when Norman is at a large formal dinner. Somehow fiddling under the table he accidentally sets fire to the table cloth.

He tries to disguise his increasingly desperate attempts to extinguish the spreading flames by clapping at inappropriate moments during the big speech.

All other candidates for the funniest moment on telly or on film welcome.

Israel has an answer

Israel is leading the way in its coronavirus vaccination programme and one reader has suggested an explanation.

The reason, he tells me, is that the medical record system has enabled the vaccine programme to advance quickly there, and that is because all of the population is registered for military service in the Israeli Defence Force.

This means, he says, that there is no problem with a population record bank and traceability.

In an instant we can see why the test, track and trace system in the UK has been failing to live up to its world-beating promise.

A return of National Service would improve its efficiency no end.