Boris Johnson imagined “a maritime raid” in the Netherlands to recover vaccines against Covid

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A “insane” plan. Boris Johnson himself recognizes this in retrospect : leading a raid in the Netherlands to steal vaccines was a bad idea. However, the former British Prime Minister really thought about it. Worse, he had even developed a plan.

In any case, this is what he assures in his book Unleashed (unleashed in French, Editor’s note), the first lines of which were revealed by Boris Johnson’s new employer, the Daily Mail, this Saturday, September 28, 2024. His memoirs are due out on October 10.

Blocked vaccines

Let’s go back in time: March 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, Boris Johnson, according to his own words, spoke with British military officials to consider this raid in the Netherlands.

The reason for this? Stocks of AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid, approximately five million dosessupposed to return to the UK but stuck in the Netherlands due to a trade row over exports between the EU and London.

Convinced that the European Union was treating Great Britain with “malice and malice”, the former tenant of 10 Downing Street is said to have “commissioned work on the technical feasibility of a maritime raid on a warehouse in Leiden, in the Netherlands , and take what was legally ours and what the UK desperately needed.”

Doug Chalmers, deputy chief of the British defense staff at the time, explained to him that a raid on the Netherlands, viasmall boats, to cross the Channel and navigate the Dutch canals was “ certainly achievable”. On paper at least.

Diplomatic repercussions?

The plan was to go “near the warehouse before going inside, to take the vaccine doses hostage, under cover, and to exfiltrate using a truck before going to the ports of the Channel,” explains Boris Johnson.

Doug Chalmers then warned his Prime Minister of diplomatic repercussions, explaining that “if we are detected, we will have to explain why we are invadinga long-time NATO ally ».

I secretly agreed with what they were all thinking, but I didn’t want to say it out loud: that this was all nonsense.

Ultimately, this operation will never take place.

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