The Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Race to Vaccinate Britain

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We were relying on the likes of a bomb disposal experts, an Indian rowing star, an Italian consultant, a submarine delivery agent, a former ambassador, a football pundit and a venture capitalist to get the UK out of the pandemic,” Bingham jokes. Of course, many had other skills – the football pundit, for instance, happened to be Jonathan Van Tam. The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

Elias Chacour Interviewed by Diarmaid MacCulloch A Palestinian Christian Working for Peace and Reconciliation in Israel CANCELLED Bodleian: Divinity School 2:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month.When I arrived, there was an Excel spreadsheet that was being filled out twice a week by the guys in BEIS [the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which hosted the VTF] to send to the Cabinet Office, so they ‘knew what we were doing’. The ears of the National Audit Office may burn (she dubs their “help” a foolish and expensive joke); most everyone else emerges from this tale, written with the help of Tim Hames (a former chief leader writer for the Times), with due credit and generous thanks. Indeed, Bingham’s candid account will be uncomfortable reading for those who nurse a dogmatic hostility to “insiders”. None of it was inevitable… the biggest risk was whether or not it was even doable [to develop Covid vaccines],” she says. “But within Government, it also felt like we were just pushing water uphill the whole time.” Points of pride The Oxford Literary Festival has in my mind become the leading literary festival of the year. The organisation, the roster of speakers, the ambience and the sheer quality of it all is superb. May it now go from strength to strength each year stretching its ambition more and more. I believe it will. In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph ahead of the book’s launch on Thursday October 20, Bingham – who emerged from the pandemic with a Damehood after leading the UK’s drive to buy a broad portfolio of effective Covid jabs – laughs at the memory.

In the seven months in 2020 that she spent as the unpaid head of the UK vaccine task force Kate Bingham moved mountains. Although the first contracts for the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine had already been signed and work was underway on dozens of others in several countries, the almost unparalleled nature of the pandemic emergency required something else — an ability to put it all together and make it happen. Meanwhile, cancelling the contract with Valneva just before its traditional jab was approved by UK regulators limited the diversity of Britain’s vaccine portfolio, undermined investment in a bioreactor plant in Scotland, damaged relations with industry, and limited global rollout. While certain individuals excelled and many more worked hard, “process apparently mattered more than outcomes” among civil servants, the Cabinet Office was the “bane of our existence”, and communications teams were “irresponsible… unfocused and patchily competent”.

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. While Bingham is disappointed that Britain has been “so weak” on sharing surplus vaccines with the rest of the world, her main regret is the continued holes in future disease preparedness. Justin Schlosberg, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Iain Dale Chaired by Stephen Law Oxford Debate. Is Our Press Free . . . To Lie and Manipulate? SOLD OUT Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event For years in Wales, we’ve had a really lovely man who comes and cleans our windows,” she says. “He’s done this for years and is very good at it… but he’s never really said anything to me before. Relationships within Government were also, at points, strained. Lee Cain, former Downing Street director of communications, “briefed against” Bingham in the newspapers and banned her from speaking to the media when she was publicising the Vaccine Registry.

Kate Bingham’s new book, The Long Shot, is a gripping account of the UK Government Vaccine Task Force’s response to the pandemic by a remarkable, determined, thoughtful, and practical individual who was at the heart of the critical decisions that had to be made. I spoke with her frequently through 2020 as we battled logistical headwinds and the media storms in development of the Oxford vaccine and was always better for our chats, absorbing the positive energy that she emanates and benefiting from her wisdom. Her clarity of thought and action in a such a dark and turbulent time is a seam running through the book, and I know for certain that her efforts saved many lives. But I have to disagree with the title, because the book shows that it really wasn’t such a "long shot" with Kate at the helm.' I knew if he [Sykes] didn’t think much about any aspect of our operation, then he’d say so – loudly. Conversely, a seal of approval from him would be as close as I could get to acquiring body armour,” she wrote. Sykes’s review approved of the taskforce’s work in July 2020. We failed to meet goal three: to build permanent pandemic capabilities in the UK,” she writes. “Not only are we vulnerable from a pandemic supply perspective, we have also lost an attractive economic opportunity.” From a remote cottage, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus… as deaths mounted and the world shut down. Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project. But perseverance and expertise paid off.

Bingham’s husband is Jesse Norman MP, then the financial secretary to the Treasury. Bingham has no difficulty demonstrating that this has nothing to do with anything, but that didn’t stop the Guardian’s jibes, its “chumocracy” tables and the rest. She was leading a team of experts who would find Covid vaccines that worked, ensure they could be manufactured at scale and then delivered into people’s arms by the end of the year. The 56-year-old hopes that her book – which she co-wrote with Dr Tim Hames, a journalist, academic and former director general of the British Venture Capital Association – will help spur change.

Bingham tapers off, before adding: “In hindsight, I should have pushed harder on some of the fights.” Tom Crewe, Maddie Mortimer, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce and Santanu Bhattacharya Chaired by Matthew Stadlen New Writers of Fiction Trinity College: Garden Room Levine Building 4:00pm Fri 31 Friday, 31 March 2023 See this event Every literary festival stays in an author’s mind for slightly individual reasons. I shall remember the Oxford festival for:At the time of Bingham’s first phone call, in January 2020, however, things looked rather different: it seemed to this British venture capitalist, who had no specialist knowledge of vaccine development, that she was being asked to take responsibility for a huge amount of government expenditure “that would, most likely, prove completely wasted.”