Boris Johnson claims he thought of authorising a raid on a warehouse within the Netherlands through the pandemic to retrieve COVID-19 vaccines.
In his upcoming memoir, he described assembly senior army officers in March 2021 to debate the plans, which he admitted have been “nuts”.
One other extract from his upcoming guide, launched by the Every day Mail, describes Mr Johnson making an attempt to persuade the Duke of Sussex to not transfer to the US.
He mentioned Downing Avenue and Buckingham Palace requested him to talk to Prince Harry in January 2020, hours after saying he and his spouse Meghan deliberate to step away from royal life.
In keeping with Mr Johnson, who was prime minister on the time, there was “a ridiculous business… when they made me try to persuade Harry to stay. Kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless”, the Every day Mail reported.
The boys met for 20 minutes on the sidelines of a UK-Africa funding summit in London’s Docklands.
Picture:Boris Johnson mentioned he held a ‘manly pep talk’ with Prince Harry at a summit in 2020. Pic: PA
Picture:Boris Johnson claims he was requested to attempt to persuade Prince Harry to not transfer to the US. Pic: PA
In the meantime, the newest extract describes Mr Johnson writing a couple of level through the pandemic when AstraZeneca was “trying, in vain” to export the vaccine to the UK from Holland.
On the time, the AstraZeneca jabs have been on the coronary heart of a cross-Channel row over exports.
He wrote 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”.
He believed the EU was treating the UK “with malice and with spite” because of the European rollout being slower than within the UK.
The extract says army chiefs informed Mr Johnson the plan was “certainly feasible”, utilizing inflexible inflatable boats to navigate Dutch canals.
However the senior officer mentioned the UK would “have to explain why we are effectively invading a long-standing Nato ally”.
“They wanted to stop us getting the five million doses, and yet they showed no real sign of wanting to use the AstraZeneca doses themselves,” Mr Johnson wrote.
