Far from being some sort of damaging claim made by a political foe, Boris Johnson himself has described how he drew-up plans to seize supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccines being stored in Holland at the height of the pandemic.
ALSO READ: Baroness Warsi quits Conservatives, saying party has become too right-wing
The UK-produced jabs were kept in a Dutch facility at the beginning of 2021. Some five million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines were packed into the warehouse – which the former Prime Minister staunchly insisted belonged to Britain.
Johnson and his colleagues found themselves at an impasse with officials in The Netherlands, and after two months of trying to negotiate the release of the vaccines, nothing was forthcoming. The discussions took place during a particularly low point in UK-EU relations.
With no resolution on the horizon, Boris Johnson – as stated in his upcoming memoir – soon turned to some of the top officials within the Armed Forces. It was suggested that British troops could navigate the Dutch canal systems to reach the factory in Leiden.
“We would send one team on a commercial flight to Amsterdam, while another team would use the cover of darkness to cross the Channel in inflatable boats and navigate up the 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. But if we are detected, we would have to explain why we were invading a NATO ally.” | Boris Johnson
However, his hare-brained scheme didn’t see the light of day – thankfully. Perhaps it was just the sort of talk you have after a few too many slices of cake at a Downing Street lockdown party. The Conservative firebrand eventually got cold feet on the matter.
BoJo reflects on the idea of invading the EU member state as ‘nuts’. Yeah, that’s one word for it, we guess. Other parts of his book, titled Unleashed, have also been serialised by the Daily Mail ahead of its official release date.
