One of the murkiest tales in Whitehall during the latest phase of the pandemic has been the campaign against Kate Bingham, chair of the UK vaccines taskforce. She’s a leading figure in life sciences investment and was hired by the government to lead and speed British efforts on finding and manufacturing a Covid-19 vaccine.
On Monday it was announced that thanks to the work of the taskforce the UK has secured 40 million initial doses of the first vaccine, unveiled yesterday. Some of it will be ready soon, if – if – regulators grant approval. The UK has potential access to 350 million doses of six leading contenders.
But for several weeks now strange stories have emerged targeted at Bingham. The Sunday Times reported that Bingham, married to Treasury minister Jesse Norman, had shared commercially sensitive information on a “Zoom” call with investors, a claim Bingham describes as nonsense.
Then at the weekend landed the story of a ÂŁ670k PR contract.
Bingham’s insistence on having her own team of press and PR specialists in science and technology raised eyebrows, but is perhaps best seen through the prism of her wanting to avoid being controlled by the Number 10 comms operation, an operation that is notoriously obsessed with control and attacking anyone in government who questions its power.
Bingham’s view, say friends, was that PR mattered – a lot – in demonstrating to pharma and the crucial networks of executives, board members and investors that Britain had a specialist team on this that knew what it was talking about, meaning that it should be taken seriously internationally. Pieces in leading science and health publications were the result. A taskforce podcast, much mocked in recent days, gained an industry following, say Bingham’s supporters. This was all preferable, runs the argument, to relying on departmental press officers who are not experts in this field.
For weeks now “figures” in Number 10 have been reported as being furious with Bingham. The briefings suggest they want her gone. Yet she was always due to leave in five weeks, when the heroic work of the vaccine taskforce is, hopefully, done.
Someone is trying to get Bingham. But who? And why?
Multiple authoritative sources inside government point the finger of blame at Number 10 and aides around the Prime Minister.
“It’s part of Operation Save Boris,” says one.
A minister says: “They want him to get the credit this Winter for the vaccine and cannot have anyone, else getting attention. Kate Bingham has done a lot of media, very effectively, and they can’t have that.”
Boris himself has been supportive of Bingham, an old family friend. Does he know what’s really going on? Does he care? This is a question ministers used to being rubbished by Number 10 are prone to asking. But it does seem a little strange that someone who went into government, suspending her commercial career, to help get Britain well-advanced on a vaccine should be monstered by Number 10 on the way out of the door rather than thanked.
Once again, the weirdest government ever has landed itself in a weird position, taking something positive – the work of the vaccine taskforce – and trashing it over an internal Number 10 power play.
The Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended Bingham on the Today programme on the Beeb today, pointing out that the access to the vaccine is what matters, not a row about some press officers.
Boris Johnson should do the same. He might even consider having the culprit horse-whipped, or forced to perform a chicken-run down Whitehall.
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