Former British PM Boris Johnson reveals UK planned ‘raid’ on NATO ally
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed a planned “raid” on a NATO ally to steal COVID-19 vaccines amid a UK-EU dispute in 2021.
Johnson’s memoirs published by the Daily Mail on Saturday cited an extract in which the ex-UK PM claimed British military officials had put forth a secret plan to steal COVID-19 vaccines from a factory in the Netherlands.
According to the memoirs, the factory was holding approximately 5 million Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine doses manufactured by subcontractors at the Dutch Halix plant.
Johnson claims in his memoirs that British military officials told him the plan to steal the vaccines was “feasible.”
However, they also warned Johnson that pulling off the operation undetected would be nearly impossible and Downing Street should be prepared for potential diplomatic fallout with both the EU and NATO if the raid was carried out as relations with Brussels were already sour over Brexit.
“If we are detected, we will have to explain why we are effectively invading a long-standing NATO ally,” Johnson in his memoirs quoted one top UK military official as saying.
Johnson, who had advocated for the UK’s exit from the EU, was elected as UK prime minister in 2019 on the promise to support a quick Brexit and end the lengthy stalemate caused after Britons’ voted to leave the European bloc’s economic alliance.
Eventually, Britain’s divorce from the European Union in 2020 followed a UK-wide referendum on June 23, 2016, in which 51.89 percent voted in favor of leaving the EU and 48.11 percent voted to remain a member state.
Johnson, a scandalous populist politician, has been rebuked by MPs over deliberately lying to parliament about lockdown-breaking parties and his many other failures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson was reportedly negligent, lazy, and systematically misled the public, while repeatedly boasting about imaginary achievements.
Moreover, Johnson failed to treat the pandemic seriously, according to Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry.
The UK COVID-19 Inquiry is an independent public inquiry into the UK’s response to, and the impact of, the pandemic.
Johnson -- who was fined in April 2022 for breaking the law by attending the birthday party in Downing Street in 2020 while his administration had enforced strict pandemic lockdowns, including restrictions on gatherings -- apologized after becoming the first law-breaking British leader who had been revealed to the public.
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