Boris Johnson has asked spies to explore options for raiding the Dutch Covid vaccine factory following EU threats to block exports of British doses.
The former prime minister was furious when Brussels halted the shipment of five million AstraZeneca jabs to the UK in March 2021 while the bloc struggled with its own rollout. He even asked security services to assess “military options” for their removal from the Leiden site. But diplomats then told him it would damage relations and jeopardise vaccine supplies from other parts of the EU.
The Mail reports that Mr Johnson will “mention” the request during his appearance at the Covid enquiry this week. A source told the paper:
The EU had basically sequestered five million doses of our vaccine. Of course the PM was enraged – they were putting British lives at risk to make a political point and distract from their own failings. He ordered officials to look at all options for responding, and that did include asking the security services to look at whether there were any options for physically going and taking the vaccines from the Netherlands and bringing them here.
Relations between the European Union and AstraZeneca deteriorated as the pharmaceutical giant said it would only be able to deliver a quarter of the planned batch of the drug to the EU due to production problems. It decided not to ship doses from the UK, so European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stepped in and threatened to block the export of five million doses to Britain.
A second source told the media that the EU “can’t accept” that the UK has a better deal with AstraZeneca, and thanks to their “aggressive” actions, the spying plan no longer seems so “prohibitive”. They said:
Boris was infuriated, as you would expect, and he wanted to look at every avenue for responding. It went well beyond trade retaliation; it was diplomatic, security, everything. He felt he was fighting for British lives and at one point he did ask whether there were military options for just going and getting these vaccines. Obviously that would have had major repercussions, not least in terms of other vaccine supplies that were being manufactured in the EU. I don’t know how far the idea got.
Mr Johnson’s spokesman “looks forward to helping the enquiry” but did not comment on their statements. He is expected to talk about a stormy row with Emmanuel Macron, who he believes encouraged the EU, and Ms von der Leyen. He reportedly only decided not to respond when he was told that a larger batch of a Pfizer drug produced elsewhere in the EU could be blocked. The UK was eventually able to replace the doses with batches from India.
Britain was the first country in the world to approve a Covid vaccine and had one of the fastest rollouts. The former prime minister is expected to apologize for the government’s failures during the pandemic, but also emphasize that the UK has done well in many areas, such as opening up society quickly after the final lockdown.
