Britain will drift from Europe, but not very far

IN JANUARY 2017 the Conservative Party’s civil war over how to leave the European Union was just beginning. Many Tory MPs had only a fuzzy idea of what quitting the single market and customs union would mean; some entertained themselves with a campaign to relaunch the Royal Yacht. Sir Michael Rawlins, then the head of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, (MHRA) Britain’s drugs regulator, saw the road ahead clearly.

Leaving the EU’s pharmaceutical regime, Sir Michael told a House of Lords committee, could mean that Britain was at the “back of the queue” for new treatments as drugmakers neglected Britain’s small market. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) would move from London, and the foreign companies that liked to be close to it would probably follow. But Britain could compensate, he said, by liberalising the rules on clinical trials and gene treatments, and speeding up the MHRA’s approvals process. “We have to get our skates on,” he said.