As of last Friday evening (19 March), news from the continent got decidedly more worrying. France and Germany in particular had started new local lockdowns as coronavirus cases started to reach more worrying levels.

All this started to put a new focus on Britain’s recovery plan. All four nations of the UK have been in lockdown since the week before Christmas, only now with minor relaxations of the rules. The UK Government, treading a very difficult path between being the government of the UK and the government of England, has a plan which states that the very earliest date from which people might start travel for a foreign holiday may be from 17 May onwards. Today, it was also announced that anyone travelling abroad may face a £5,000 fine travelling from England for a destination outside of the UK.

The weekend press was full of noise over whether or not people in the UK may be able to travel abroad for summer holidays, and despite many of us trying to dispute the fact that not everyone has the funds or ability to travel abroad for a summer holiday, statistics show that the average person in the UK takes 1.9 foreign holidays per year.

Brian Adcock’s cartoon features Prime Minister Boris Johnson on what looks like the beach under the White Cliffs of Dover facing a huge, potentially engulfing ‘third wave’ which is pushing up a huge coronavirus cell onto British shores. And the coronavirus in the picture is not any old coronavirus; it wears armbands adorned in the EU flag, a sign that the variants that have been circulating on mainland Europe are on their way to Britain. Perhaps eluding to the UK Government’s Coronavirus Act, the cartoon shows the sandcastles behind Johnson flying the cross of St George, and not the Union flag. (Of note today – it was reported that the Prime Minister had apparently reflected on that it had been a mistake to allow the devolved governments to be able to take their own response to the virus.)

A new war between the EU and the UK has blown up in recent months as Britain’s enviable supply of vaccines are meaning that as of today, 23 March, the number we have currently vaccinated has reached just over 28 million first doses across the four UK nations, with just over 2 million having had their second jab already. France, a country with a population of similar size has given first doses to just over 3.8m. Their second dose numbers aren’t far behind ours, however. But the ill-feeling between the UK and the EU has rumbled on from the end of the Brexit transition period straight into fury as EU nations have not been able to get access to as many vaccines as the UK (something only possible because of Britain leaving the EU). I discussed this in my blog of 5 February on Peter Brooke’s Plum Pudding cartoon.

Ursula Von Der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, and the politician name-checked in the cartoon, quoted as saying “we must share fairly” has now also said that the EU Commission would consider the possibility of forbidding planned exports of the vaccine out of the EU until Astra-Zeneca fulfils its contracts for the vaccine to EU nations.

However, this is also only a week or so after a number of EU nations temporarily stopped giving the Astra-Zeneca vaccine to older patients after a small number of blood clots in patients who had received the vaccine were reported. The WHO and other health agencies refuted these claims, saying there was no evidence that the vaccine caused these clots, and that the rate reported was only around the same rate as would be expected in an average population ordinarily.

The fears that the variants of the virus circulating on the European mainland now reaching British shores due to the demand for summer holidays is something that is being discussed at length. The potential risk to the vaccination programme is high; it has not been confirmed that the vaccines currently being rolled out across the UK will afford the same level of protection against the variants of the virus. Last week it also was confirmed that there could be some delay to Britain’s roll-out of the vaccine as supplies from the Serum Institute of India were potentially facing four-week delays.

A third wave of the virus is a fear many in the UK are dealing with, and after a long winter lockdown, the pressure to unlock for good continues amongst people and the press.

Sadly, for the first time, I feel I must add a disclaimer to this blog post – that all views which may be alluded to in the cartoon are those of the artist, and not my own. I merely analyse what’s in the picture and report the news the content may pertain to. I may write more on why this is necessary in due course.