Weird science: Sunak’s Horizon posturing puts his sole key achievement so far at risk

Rishi Sunak may know how to repeat his five pledges, parrot-fashion, but he doesn’t seem capable of delivering any of them. Inflation remains stubbornly high, the economy refuses to grow, debt and NHS waiting lists continue to rise and small boats return to UK waters. It leaves you wondering whether, when his benighted premiership finally comes to an end, there will be anything in Sunak’s wins column to consider alongside all his losses.

So far, the prime minister’s sole significant achievement is the Windsor Framework, an overhyped but welcome revision of terms of trade between the EU, Britain and Northern Ireland. Not only did it replace a typical Boris Johnson botched job by offering businesses less friction and more certainty, but Windsor also opened up the possibility of future co-operation between the UK and EU, including one seeming no-brainer: The chance to return to the Horizon scheme that funds scientific research.

While in the EU, Britain was a net beneficiary of Horizon, paying in £6.8bn and receiving back £7.2bn. Three British universities – Oxford, Cambridge and University College London – were among the top 10 recipients. Horizon helped to fund between 16,000-18,000 British jobs and, crucially, connected British scientists and engineers with their European counterparts, enabling cross-border collaboration on a series of projects.

It meant Britain had a seat at the table when major ventures were planned and played a part when major innovations were delivered. It was such a positive for Britain that even Johnson and David Frost lobbied for continued participation to be written into their original Brexit deal, but the protocol covering this was never agreed. Attempts to fix this continued but were put on ice indefinitely when Johnson and Frost postured over scrapping the Northern Ireland Protocol.

So when Sunak intervened and Windsor was signed in March – Johnson voted against, naturally – the science sector reportedly responded with “sighs of relief”. Since then, though, they have been disappointed. Rather than paying up and signing up to something that delivers a net gain, the government has quibbled over the price of returning to Horizon – a price set in Johnson’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, which Brussels says it will not begin to renegotiate until next year at the earliest.

Meanwhile, British science worries about a brain drain to EU countries, as well as exclusion from major projects. There’s a funding gap to consider, too – it is estimated that the UK will miss out on £10bn by not being in Horizon, and the government has ring-fenced only £6.8bn to fill the hole.

And now the stasis is threatening to undermine not just science but the Windsor Framework itself. Brexiteers of various stripes are already on manoeuvres against this, with the Democratic Unionist Party’s Jeffrey Donaldson this week backing a different trade arrangement proposed by a pro-Brexit think tank, and hinting that its adoption might persuade his party to return to Stormont, where the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended since May 2022.

Now, big beast of Brexit Iain Duncan Smith has used Horizon to attack Windsor, telling the Daily Express that it had “made things worse” and calling Brussels’ refusal to give way “just another example of the EU always playing hardball.. we have given them everything and they have given nothing in return.”

In comments that will be greeted as delusional by the British scientific community, IDS added: “The EU is scared stiff of us sucking away scientists from them to us. That’s why they want us locked into Horizon on their terms. The fact is that the only reason anyone invested in Horizon was because the British were involved.

“We have a much better scientific research base than the EU and scientists and investors want to come to the UK. If we go it alone we could be a scientific superpower on our own without the EU.”

The fact that UK science and research is so worried about a future without Horizon funding gives the lie to that claim – one which rests, yet again, on the much-disproved idea that Britain is so exceptional that “they need us more than we need them”.

But Sunak should be wary. His Horizon posturing is taking some of the shine off the one thing most agree he has got right. If Windsor is discredited, and ultimately falls, what has he got left?