Johnson resignation brings uncertainty but some hope for sector

The article suggests that the downside of the brainless obduracy of the Brussels falls on the British. I discussed this in the Winter edition of the Salisbury Review A EUROPEAN HORIZON Given the proximity of Christmas and the rise of the omicron variant, few will have paid much attention to a December 22nd BBC News report concerning yet another “spat” with the EU. It may be over by the time you read this but the dispute itself tells us much about what to expect from the European Commission and the advisability, or otherwise, of Britain attempting any kind of collaboration. Horizon Europe is the Commission’s flagship funding programme for research and innovation, running from 2021 to 2027, with a budget of just under a hundred billion euros. British participation was confirmed in December 2020 and it had seemed one of the least controversial parts of the Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has allocated nearly seven billion pounds to cover the British contribution until 2025. Yet British projects have gone unfunded and British scientists unpaid because the people of Ulster have an appetite for English sausages. Although little could be less relevant to science policy than the wretched Northern Ireland Protocol, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” means that billion-euro initiatives can be held hostage over the tiniest chipolata. Last November, after nearly a year of obstruction on the part of the Commission, the European research and innovation community finally lost patience and issued a statement endorsed by more than a thousand universities, fifty-six academies of science and several thousand of the Continent’s most distinguished researchers, urging the EU to finalise British participation immediately. It stated that: “Further delays or even non-association would result in a missed opportunity and a major weakening of our collective research strength and competitiveness,” Professor Kurt Deketelaere, secretary-general of the League of European Research Universities wrote that: “A further delay [in UK association] simply for political reasons is unacceptable.” But Ursula von der Leyen and her cronies remain obdurate - had they been disposed to listen to experts they’d have done so before the vaccine debacle. Any failure to kowtow to every last one of their dictats must be punished, irrespective of the damage that might do to Europe’s own interests. At the very least, this suggests that committing to projects under the purview of such a body is to hoist one’s own Damacletian sword. As I write, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has just advised that the Northern Ireland dispute could be resolved in the near future. We’ve heard it before. Whatever the outcome, I suggest that there are lessons here for our long-term relationship with what we may regard as a not altogether friendly power. A power, moreover, that has an erratic, incompetent, and unaccountable leadership. Indeed, Professor Deketelae goes on to suggest that the squabble is sending a discouraging message to other potential collaborators. Unfortunately, he's left it a tad late to warn that the Commission’s bizarre values and priorities are very much to the detriment of the European people. Recep Erdogan’s human rights record has proved no barrier to Turkey becoming an associate member of Horizon Europe, together with such science superpowers Kosovo and Ukraine, but Switzerland is barred. Back in 1992, Swiss voters declined to join what was then the European Economic Community. Talks aimed at achieving a greater level of harmonisation were abandoned last summer after seven years. More than 120 arrangements had been agreed but the insatiate cormorant of Brussels remained unsatisfied. So, despite their experience with advanced and large-scale science projects, from medicine to nuclear physics, Swiss scientists and engineers are also out in the cold. Will the people of Europe come to regret the intellectual capacity that their lords and masters are discarding so casually? Well, Switzerland has two universities in the world’s top fifty. That may not seem impressive when viewed from this side of the Channel - Britain has eight with four in London alone - but the whole of the EU can only muster half a dozen. Moreover, EHL Zurich is rated at 15 while Europe’s finest, LMU Munich, comes in at 32. This puts it behind Edinburgh, LSE, UCL, Imperial College, Cambridge, and, at number one, Oxford. Back in 1966, I joined the first group to read physics at the then brand-new University of Warwick and, I’m delighted to say, in half a century it has already reached number 78 in the rankings. This is well ahead of France’s celebrated Sorbonne, which clocks-in at 88. Italy’s top University, Bologna, was founded in 1088 and has taken nearly a millennium to reach 178 while Spain barely makes it into the top 200, with Barcelona at 193. Incidentally, those tempted to write-off the United States should note that, including three in Canada, North America accounts for more than half of the world’s top fifty seats of learning. Much innovation happens outside universities, of course, but Professor Deketelae and his colleagues certainly have good reason for concern. But what might Britain be missing? While the programme includes some well-found scientific institutions which I would be loath for us to abandon, for the most part these Euro-initiatives have been massively bureaucratic money-pits that have diverted funds from dozens, perhaps hundreds, of domestic projects. I say “initiatives'' because Horizon Europe is far from the first and it is possible by now to gauge their effectiveness. In their present form, they began in Lisbon, a few years before Prime Minister Gordon Brown skulked around the city hoping nobody back home would notice him signing-away our birthright with the eponymous treaty. The so-called “Lisbon Strategy” was originally set out by the European Council in March 2000. It was intended to make the EU "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion" by 2010. None of these goals was achieved. It was superseded by Horizon 2020, a 10-year programme proposed by what had become the European Commission for “the advancement of the economy of the European Union”. It aimed at "smart, sustainable, inclusive growth" with greater coordination of national and European policy. Since then, the number of EU companies in the world's top forty has gone from ten to two, with none in the first thirty. Now we have Horizon Europe to “bolster European champions", whatever they are. Once again, "The strategic planning process will focus in particular on the global challenges and European industrial competitiveness". There is no record that Einstein actually did say that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result, as is often attributed, but the Commission is clearly at a loss for ideas. In this instance, it doesn’t take a Nobel Laureate to recognise a fiscal black-hole. Sending billions to the Byzantine bureaucracy of Brussels, which can then be withheld on a whim, is clearly untenable and non-association would appear to be Britain’s best option. In the fullness of time, it may be possible to negotiate collaboration on a case by case basis. When it comes to advanced pure science, such as astronomical observatories, there are plenty of projects outside Europe that would welcome UK participation. And Horizon Europe’s half-baked industrial policy, having failed repeatedly in the past, holds few attractions in the present. It is a curious “champion” that needs constant “bolstering” from the taxpayer. In these days of low interest rates there is no shortage of cash for plausible investments while a new generation of venture capitalists is happy to pursue even the most far-fetched ideas, from quantum computing to landing on Mars. As a physicist, I still find it hard to imagine how fusion power could be a commercial proposition but several private projects are underway. British and European firms should be encouraged to compete for investment and market-share rather than for rent-seeking government handouts. History furnishes some lessons. In the 1980s, for example, many in America became alarmed at Japanese success with the MSX personal computer system. They were excellent machines - I owned one myself. Naturally there were calls for the US government to fund domestic competitors such as Apple, whose fortunes back then seemed to be on the wane. However, President Regan felt that there was little prospect of politicians and civil servants second-guessing the market so the late Steve Jobs was left to his own devices. Literally. I doubt that any committee of government bureaucrats would have come up with the iPhone. Iain Salisbury, retired physicist, Edgbaston