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

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We are experiencing delays with deliveries to many countries, but in most cases local services have now resumed. The author proceeds will be donated to the new university The New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) and early years education, development and advocacy charity Kindred Squared. When we get past the introductory chapters, we get a really good insight into how by adopting a venture capitalist business type approach with a clear focus on outputs - in contrast to the Civil Service's focus on process – the vaccine task force was a success. Instead, they carried on with usual Government bureaucracy and inefficiency, with civil servants and politicians spending time protecting their 'fiefdoms' and promoting their own interests. From a cottage miles away from Westminster, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus - and her daughter's exams.

Bingham and Hames’s accessible, edge-of-the-seat account of how British innovators vaccinated the UK and much of the rest of the world is also a quiet, compelling, non-partisan argument for dialogue between business and politics.

But with the UK government in turmoil, this compelling book may be most valuable as a fresh vision for how to lead in a crisis. With the revelations concerning partygate and other scandals it does make one question what sort of the administration Johnson was running in No 10. Johnson is benignly hands-off til he has to become positively hands-on in reigning in spinning misinformation about the VTF coming out of Number 10. Finally, Bingham finishes off the book with reflections on working with government and the issues that hold Government back from delivering on service and projects.

An excellent read… Capturing the exceptional pace and energy of everyone involved in discovering and producing effective therapies against Covid-19. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

I sympathise greatly with her thoughts on the internal politics within HMG: private sector and public sector are like oil and water - they don't mix well.

Political manoeuvring, miscommunications and administrative meddling nearly jeopardised the project. Covid is still spreading, probably mutating and just waiting for the next advantageous circumstance to jump back into wider global populations. She is a board member of the Francis Crick Institute and was awarded a DBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services as Chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce. From a remote cottage, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus… as deaths mounted and the world shut down. This is the insider view into how the Vaccine Taskforce beat those long odds and delivered a scientific miracle.Fast-paced and very compelling… The Vaccine Taskforce will always be remembered as British science at its very best. nearly complete absence in the civil service of scientific, industrial, commercial and manufacturing skills'. From a small cottage, Bingham juggled vaccine suppliers, Whitehall, the media circus – and her daughter’s exams.