yellowspanner
It's hard to know what you are standing by, since that was your first post on the thread.
The example of vaccine rollout is a good illustration of what I was trying to underline:
The UK is ideally placed to vaccinate, because it has, in the NHS, a centralised health service that few other countries can rival. Chronic underinvestment and the current gvmt's selling off of sections of it to US providers notwithstanding.
Countries where healthcare is fragmented and multi-layered are far less able to vaccinate on a similar scale, as the infrastructure does not exist. It is even harder if their populations are inherently wary of centralised authority and past examples of health scandals (contaminated blood & Mercator, to quote but 2 French examples) exacerbate those fears.
The UK gambled on AZ and on on how flexible it could be with regard to the gap between first and second doses (hence why figures on vaccination rates are to be analysed closely: UK figures show those having received 1 dose, while many other countries don't consider someone vaccinated until after their 2nd dose). That gamble paid off, luckily. If it hadn't (and scientists worldwide were sceptical), things would have been very different. They remain uncertain due to the rise of variants, so crowing about such matters may or may not be justified.
Yes, Macron's comments on AZ were very ill-judged, like some of his other remarks, but it was true, at the time he commented, that AZ had not tested its vaccine on over-65s. His remarks may well have delayed AZ provision, but France is not reliant on AZ the way the UK is. And in any case, because of the cultural context I mentioned earlier, delaying, although not his first choice, was inevitable once other EU states began to do so and was more likely to reassure French citizens than just continuing regardless when there began to be cases of unusual blood clotting in younger vaccinated adults. Against the backdrop of French attitudes to vaccines, that would have been more damaging.
The BBC has become a government mouthpiece and I have written to the UK press about several articles on a range of issues relating to French politics over the last 15 or so years, leading them more than once to correct their inaccurate reporting. That is what underpins my remarks on the UK media. As for the Daily Mail, Telegraph, etc., their bias and failings are obvious.
The majority of UK voters didn't vote for the current PM. My comments on the obvious flaws in his track record are therefore not to be read as a general criticism of the electorate. The fact that he is nonetheless PM is, however, hardly a ringing endorsement of British democracy.