Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims he considered ordering an “aquatic raid” against the European Union (EU) to seize coronavirus vaccines impounded in the Netherlands. Five million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were held up by the EU and Britain’s NATO allies in 2020. EU officials claimed that the pharmaceutical corporation had to meet its obligations to the bloc before exporting vaccines to Britain.
“I was angry enough to contemplate this clandestine operation because after two months of futile negotiation, I had come to the conclusion that the EU was treating us with malice and with spite… we were vaccinating our population much faster than they were, and the European electorate had long since noticed,” Johnson argues in his latest memoir, Unleashed.
Johnson claims he asked the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff, Lieutenant General Douglas Chalmers, “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,” and that he was told it “certainly feasible.”
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“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 ribs [rigid inflatable boats] and navigate up the canals,” Johnson said of Chalmers’s plan—although the officer added that the raid would certainly be detected, and the British government would have to explain “why we are effectively invading a long-standing NATO ally.” In the end, Johnson dropped the idea.
The AstraZeneca vaccine, also known as Covishield, was developed in collaboration with the University of Oxford. It was not approved for use in the United States due to issues with blood clots that British regulators were slow to recognize.
Johnson, elected as a pro-Brexit libertarian, had much of his policy agenda driven by his liberal wife, Carrie Symonds. He considers mass vaccinations, costly net zero policies, and agitating for more war in Ukraine his legacy.
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