As a scientist (or, perhaps more correctly, an ex-scientist) I do still spare a little time attempting to keep up with the scientific world. One of the many troubling aspects of the Brexit process is the apparent lack of any substantive plan for scientific collaboration with the EU when the "big stupid" finally happens.
The Government's position paper, published a couple of months ago, is long on warm words and woefully short of practical solutions. A lot of it is couched in the utterly facile "strong and stable" vein.
It is fine to call for "a more ambitious and close partnership with the EU than any yet agreed between the EU and a non-EU country" but this needs to be backed up with evidence of how this might be achieved.
Problems abound. Take, for instance, the Horizon 2020 programme. Currently the UK is a full member with voting rights on the future of the programme. After Brexit it is unlikely that the UK will have anything better than take-it-or-leave-it associate status. How is that "more ambitious and close"?
And that is a programme where third-party access is possible. What about all those EU-only schemes? The European Defence Research Programme is one such. The position paper feebly states that the UK would "welcome dialogue". And on Nuclear R&D there is a similarly pathetic hope "to find a way to continue to work with the EU". This is hardly inspirational stuff!
All this is symptomatic of the cack-handed approach HMG is taking to Brexit. We will all be the poorer as a result.
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