Boris Johnson thought-about an “aquatic raid” on a Dutch warehouse to grab Covid vaccines in the course of the peak of the pandemic, he has revealed in his memoirs.
The previous prime minister mentioned plans with senior navy officers in March 2021, based on an extract from his forthcoming e-book, Unleashed, printed within the Every day Mail.
The AstraZeneca vaccine was, on the time, on the coronary heart of a cross-Channel row over exports, and Johnson believed the EU was treating the UK “with malice”.
Johnson stated that he “had commissioned some work on whether or not it is likely to be technically possible to launch an aquatic raid on a warehouse in Leiden, within the Netherlands, and to take that which was legally ours and which the UK desperately wanted”.
The deputy chief of the defence employees, Lt Gen Doug Chalmers, advised the prime minister the plan was “definitely possible” and would contain utilizing inflexible inflatable boats to navigate Dutch canals.
“They might then rendezvous on the goal; enter; safe the hostage items, exfiltrate utilizing an articulated lorry, and make their option to the Channel ports,” Johnson wrote.
Nevertheless, Chalmers advised Johnson it could be tough to hold out the mission undetected, that means the UK would “have to elucidate why we’re successfully invading a longstanding Nato ally”.
Johnson concluded: “In fact, I knew he was proper, and I secretly agreed with what all of them thought, however didn’t wish to say aloud: that the entire thing was nuts.”
Elsewhere within the printed extracts, Johnson denied consuming cake at what he described because the “feeblest occasion within the historical past of human festivity” held to rejoice his 56th birthday in the course of the Covid lockdown.
He didn’t see or eat any cake on the occasion on 19 June 2020, he stated, including that it “by no means occurred” to him or the then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, that the Partygate birthday gathering was “not directly towards the foundations”.
He wrote: “Here’s what truly occurred that day. I stood briefly at my place within the Cupboard Room, the place I’ve conferences all through the day, whereas the chancellor and various members of employees stated comfortable birthday.
“I noticed no cake. I ate no blooming cake. If this was a celebration, it was the feeblest occasion within the historical past of human festivity. I had solely simply received over Covid. I didn’t sing. I didn’t dance.”
Downing Road beforehand admitted that employees “gathered briefly” within the Cupboard Room for what was reportedly a shock get-together for Johnson organised by his now-wife, Carrie.
Johnson turned the primary prime minister to obtain a legal penalty whereas in workplace over Partygate, though an investigation by the previous senior civil servant Sue Grey discovered that neither Johnson nor Sunak was conscious of the occasion prematurely.
Within the extracts from his autobiography, Johnson additionally stated he believed he “might need carked it” when he was in intensive care with Covid with out the “abilities and expertise” of his nurses.
Johnson spent a number of days in intensive care with Covid in April 2020. He described not wanting to go to sleep on his first evening in intensive care “partly in case I by no means awoke”.
Following his launch from hospital, the then prime minister spent a while at Chequers together with his now-wife Carrie, and he recalled becoming a member of in with the clap for the NHS on a Thursday night.
“I clapped with deep emotion as a result of my lungs had been telling me that I had been by way of one thing actually fairly nasty, and that if it hadn’t been for [his nurses] Jenny and Luis, fidgeting with these oxygen tubes all evening with all their ability and expertise, I feel I might need carked it,” he wrote.
On his admission to ICU, Johnson stated he “began to doze, however didn’t wish to sleep – partly in case I by no means awoke, or in case they determined to carry out some stealthy tracheotomy with out letting me know”.
