Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has disclosed a bold, covert plan to "raid" a NATO ally for COVID-19 vaccines during a tense UK-EU standoff in 2021. 

In memoir excerpts published by the Daily Mail on Saturday, Johnson recounts how British military officials proposed a secret operation to seize COVID-19 vaccines from a manufacturing plant in the Netherlands. The factory in question reportedly housed around five million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, produced by subcontractors at the Halix facility.

The dramatic plan emerged amid heated vaccine shortages and distribution disputes between the UK and the EU.

In his memoirs, Boris Johnson reveals that British military officials assured him the plan to seize vaccines from the Netherlands was "feasible". However, they cautioned that executing the operation without detection would be nearly impossible, warning of serious diplomatic consequences. 

Officials advised Johnson that, given the already strained relations with Brussels post-Brexit, Downing Street should brace for potential fallout with both the EU and NATO if the raid proceeded. The move risked deepening tensions when vaccine shortages were causing friction between the UK and the EU.

In his memoirs, Johnson quoted one top UK military official as saying, “If we are detected, we will have to explain why we are effectively invading a long-standing NATO ally." 

In the 2016 referendum, 51.89% of voters opted for the UK to leave the European Union, while 48.11% chose to remain. Under Boris Johnson’s leadership, the UK officially left the EU in 2020, bringing an end to years of protracted negotiations and uncertainty about the nation's membership in the bloc.

Johnson, a polarizing populist figure, has been sharply criticized by MPs for misleading parliament about lockdown-breaking gatherings during his time in office, as well as for numerous failings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reports suggest that Johnson was negligent and lacked seriousness in his handling of the pandemic. He was accused of misleading the public with exaggerated claims of success while failing to properly address the crisis. Hugo Keith KC, counsel to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, noted that Johnson did not treat the pandemic with the urgency it demanded.

The UK COVID-19 Inquiry, an independent investigation into the government’s pandemic response, has examined these failures closely. In April 2022, Johnson became the first British prime minister to be fined while in office, after attending a birthday gathering in Downing Street in 2020, violating his own administration's strict lockdown rules. He later issued a public apology.