It was a moment when it became clear that the high-water mark of Brexit had been reached and the tide was going out fast on what is now a disgraced and palpable failure. The universal and enthusiastic welcome to Thursday’s news that Britain was to rejoin the £81bn EU Horizon programme for scientific collaboration, albeit as an associate member, was a surprise – not least to the prime minister, who had dragged his feet for months in fear of the reaction of his Europhobic right.
But there was no Brexiter fury that Britain should stick to the plan B, the go-it-alone £14bn Pioneer programme, as part of a vision for Britain becoming a scientific “global superpower”. It was obvious that any such argument would have been drowned out by the entire scientific community saying the proposition was nonsense. To have any scientific heft, leave aside Brexit hyperbole about superpower ambitions, Britain needed to work with the world’s biggest programme of scientific, collaborative research. Just ask the president of the Royal Society, Sir Adrian Smith; Nobel prize-winner and chief executive of the Francis Crick Institute Sir Paul Nurse; the Academy of Medical Sciences; the Wellcome Trust and a plethora of others. Pioneer might have had a chance in the first flush of victory amid excitement over an “oven-ready” Brexit deal and the vast opportunities of “global Britain” that awaited. Now the claim would have been greeted with a loud raspberry. Time to beat a retreat.
