I planned to invade the Netherlands under Covid

The release of the book, which appears in the Daily Mail, threatens to dominate the Conservative conference, which opens on Saturday, diverting attention from the four candidates vying to lead the party. Mr Johnson does not plan to attend.

Mr Johnson wrote that he was furious that supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which were developed with support from the British government, had been kidnapped.

The five million doses remained stuck at the Halix factory in the Netherlands because it has been a long-standing part of AstraZenecas supply chain.

After five weeks of negotiations, in March 2021, he called senior military brass to ask if it was technically feasible to launch a water raid on a warehouse in Leiden, Netherlands, and take what was ours legally and that the United Kingdom had chosen. desperately needed.

Lt. Gen. Doug Chalmers, deputy chief of the defense staff, told him such action was certainly feasible. He explained how we could do it, Mr. Johnson wrote. We would send one team on a commercial flight to Amsterdam, while another team would use the cover of darkness to coast across the English Channel. [rigid inflatable boats] and navigate the channels.

They would then find themselves at the target; enter; secure the hostages' goods, exfiltrate using a semi-trailer and head towards the Channel ports.

But I must warn you, Prime Minister, and they all looked at me meaningfully: it will not be possible to do this without detection. He pointed out that there were containment measures in Belgium and the Netherlands and that local authorities could observe our movements. If we are detected, we will have to explain why we are indeed invading a long-time NATO ally.

The former prime minister concluded: Of course I knew he was right, and I secretly agreed with what they were all thinking but I didn't want to say it out loud: that it was all crazy .

He said he was desperate because he felt it was his primary duty to get vaccines while people in my country were dying of Covid.

Mr Johnson accused the EU of treating us meanly and unkindly [because] we were vaccinating our population much faster than they were, and the European electorate had noticed this for a long time.

The blows prove that Brexit was a success

As of March 2021, Britain has vaccinated around 30% of the British population, while the European Union has only managed 8%.

The EU, where countries were facing difficulties with the rollout of their vaccines, launched legal action against AstraZeneca to prevent it from exporting the vaccines to the United Kingdom, despite Britain signing a bombproof contract to secure the first 100 million doses.

They had kidnapped our vaccines, but that was not the real scandal, he wrote, saying his pencil-and-kick rage was directed at the EU, which he said wanted blocking access to vaccines but not using them herself.

Mr Johnson said he was stunned when Emmanuel Macron, the French president, claimed that Britain's AstraZeneca vaccine was virtually ineffective for over-65s.

EU governments' frustration is of course compounded by Britain's Brexit success, he said.

Mr Johnson said he was glad he had not violently seized the vaccines, admitting it would not have improved relations with the EU. “But it still enraged me, in fact it still is the case that they are prepared to let the British die rather than recognize the possibility that there could be an advantage to Brexit,” he said. -he added.

Harry's pep talk

Mr Johnson also claims in his book that he was asked to give a pep talk to Prince Harry to try to persuade him not to leave the UK.

The two men had an informal 20-minute meeting, which took place behind closed doors on the sidelines of a UK-Africa investment summit in London's Docklands on January 20, 2020.

Sources close to the Duke of Sussex have confirmed that the then Prime Minister suggested that he and Meghan stay in the UK.

However, several sources with intimate knowledge of these meetings at the time insisted that the Palace had not asked Mr Johnson to intervene.

A day later, the Duke renounced his royal duties and flew to Canada to join the Duchess.