Boris Johnson: we considered ‘aquatic raid’ on Netherlands to seize Covid vaccine

Former prime minister admits in extract from forthcoming book that he discussed possible military operation at height of pandemic

Tom Ambrose and agency

Fri 27 Sep 2024 19.18 EDT

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Boris Johnson considered an “aquatic raid” on a Dutch warehouse to seize Covid vaccines during the height of the pandemic, he has revealed in his memoirs.

The former prime minister discussed plans with senior military officials in March 2021, according to an extract from his forthcoming book, Unleashed, published in the Daily Mail.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was, at the time, at the heart of a cross-Channel row over exports, and Johnson believed the EU was treating the UK “with malice”.

Johnson said that he “had commissioned some work on whether it might be technically feasible to launch an aquatic raid on a warehouse in Leiden, in the Netherlands, and to take that which was legally ours and which the UK desperately needed”.

The deputy chief of the defence staff, Lt Gen Doug Chalmers, told the prime minister the plan was “certainly feasible” and would involve using rigid inflatable boats to navigate Dutch canals.

“They would then rendezvous at the target; enter; secure the hostage goods, exfiltrate using an articulated lorry, and make their way to the Channel ports,” Johnson wrote.

However, Chalmers told Johnson it would be difficult to carry out the mission undetected, meaning the UK would “have to explain why we are effectively invading a longstanding Nato ally”.

Johnson concluded: “Of course, I knew he was right, and I secretly agreed with what they all thought, but did not want to say aloud: that the whole thing was nuts.”

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Elsewhere in the published extracts, Johnson denied eating cake at what he described as the “feeblest event in the history of human festivity” held to celebrate his 56th birthday during the Covid lockdown.

He did not see or eat any cake at the event on 19 June 2020, he said, adding that it “never occurred” to him or the then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, that the Partygate birthday gathering was “in some way against the rules”.

He wrote: “Here is what actually happened that day. I stood briefly at my place in the Cabinet Room, where I have meetings throughout the day, while the chancellor and assorted members of staff said happy birthday.

“I saw no cake. I ate no blooming cake. If this was a party, it was the feeblest event in the history of human festivity. I had only just got over Covid. I did not sing. I did not dance.”

Downing Street previously admitted that staff “gathered briefly” in the Cabinet Room for what was reportedly a surprise get-together for Johnson organised by his now-wife, Carrie.

Johnson became the first prime minister to receive a criminal penalty while in office over Partygate, although an investigation by the former senior civil servant Sue Gray found that neither Johnson nor Sunak was aware of the event in advance.

In the extracts from his autobiography, Johnson also said he believed he “might have carked it” when he was in intensive care with Covid without the “skills and experience” of his nurses.

Johnson spent several days in intensive care with Covid in April 2020. He described not wanting to fall asleep on his first night in intensive care “partly in case I never woke up”.

Following his release from hospital, the then prime minister spent some time at Chequers with his now-wife Carrie, and he recalled joining in with the clap for the NHS on a Thursday evening.

“I clapped with deep emotion because my lungs were telling me that I had been through something really pretty nasty, and that if it hadn’t been for [his nurses] Jenny and Luis, fiddling with those oxygen tubes all night with all their skill and experience, I think I might have carked it,” he wrote.

On his admission to ICU, Johnson said he “started to doze, but didn’t want to sleep - partly in case I never woke up, or in case they decided to perform some stealthy tracheotomy without letting me know”.

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