[detritus]

A cursory Google search implies that the EU did indeed invest quite a lot of money on the AZ vaccine roll out, mid-August, after it had already entered trials which had been part-funded by the UK government months earlier.

The EU investment appears to amount to a deposit on actual vaccine doses, and a sum to ensure that dose costs are kept at cost until the pandemic is over - rather than a support of the development itself, which appears to have mostly born by AZ itself, the UK government and Oxford university. The UK has since spent billions (about £3Bn?) on AZ Vaccine procurement, a figure which dwarfs the EU's spend on the same (I think it's something like EUR360M?).

As much as I dislike politics and am disgusted by some of the costs - especially around PPEs last year (which seems to have been much abused) - I find it easier to believe that there was a lot of panicked flailing and a gamble on vaccines as a way out of this mess that would allow the UK to get started back up ASAP, which they're now reaping, rather than using the current mess as a distractionary political football.