Boris Johnson claims he considered raid into Holland to recover ‘kidnapped’ Covid vaccines – UK politics live

Boris Johnson has written of the moment he handed before he went to the ICU suffering with Covid-19.

Writing in Unleashed, serialised in Mail + he said: “With the oximeter on my finger, we could see that my oxygen levels started slowly to creep up again, and I began to feel sleepy. Before I folded, there was one thing I had to do.

“I rang Dominic Raab. ‘First Secretary of State,’ I said.

“‘PM,’ he said. “‘You know I said that you might have to deputise for me,’ I said.

“‘Well, that moment has come.’

“‘No problem, PM,’ he said. ‘Get well soon.’

“He didn’t sound remotely rattled – in fact, he went on to do an ­outstanding job.”

If Mr Johnson had died, Mr Raab would have taken over as caretaker prime minister while a successor was chosen from a leadership election.

Boris Johnson has insisted he didn’t see anything illegal at his Downing Street birthday party writing in his memoir Unleashed, being serialised in Mail +.

Writing about the fallout of the event he said: “I relied upon Sue Gray, who (though I did not know this) had already been approached to be the chief of staff to Ed Miliband, former Labour leader, and who was to go on to be the chief of staff to Keir Starmer, my number one political foe.

“Some of the allegations in her report – vomiting, fights and so on – turned out to be untrue, and had to be withdrawn.

“As for all the other fines that were issued – more than 120 fixed penalty notices – the answer is of course that I don’t know. I wasn’t there, or didn’t see anything that looked illegal. If the fines were like mine, they must have been a bit puzzling.

“But what could I do? I paid the fine and got on with the job. I had a lot on.”

Defence Secretary John Healey is looking at a rumoured Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon “really carefully”.

Mr Healey said on Friday airstrikes and rocket fire exchanged between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah present a “risk that this escalates into something that is much wider and much more serious”.

Defence Secretary John Healey is looking at a rumoured Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon “really carefully”.

Mr Healey said on Friday airstrikes and rocket fire exchanged between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah present a “risk that this escalates into something that is much wider and much more serious”.

Asked about the rumoured ground invasion, Mr Healey replied: “We’re watching this really carefully. That will be a matter for the Israelis.

“At the moment, it’s airstrikes. At the moment, there are missiles from the Lebanese Hezbollah directed at Israel. This conflict serves no one.”

Boris Johnson has insisted that he had no birthday cake at the Downing Street event that launched the Partygate scandal.

The former Prime Minister wrote in Unleashed being serialised Mail +: “I saw no cake. I ate no blooming cake. If this was a party, it was the feeblest event in the history of human festivity.

“I had only just got over Covid. I did not sing. I did not dance. I ate a salad – but then it was lunchtime, and I do normally eat at my desk. I did not meet anyone that I don’t meet in the course of the working day.”

The scandal contributed to Boris Johnson‘s downfall as Prime Minister and his resignation as an MP.

He added: “I have no idea what version of events people gave the police. But I very much doubt that it was fair. I was obviously ­vulnerable to the testimony of some who were determined to bring me down.”

The former Prime Minister has claimed he knew he was suffering from life-threatening Covid when he couldn’t finish the cheese in the fridge.

He wrote in Unleashed being serialised in Mail +: “By Sunday, April 5, there were more than 1,000 daily ­fatalities across the country. I was still flat out, floating in and out of consciousness, waiting for my fix of paracetamol, when Carrie came in like a ministering angel.

“‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You need to get something to eat.’

“I said that the kitchen really felt a long way away. So she brought up some apple and cheese. I looked at that cheese with such complete apathy that I knew – after a lifetime as a functioning cheese-oholic – that something was definitely awry.

He added: “Carrie rang Dr Price and explained things, and then passed the phone to me. He wanted me to come in right away, to St Thomas’ Hospital. No, no, I said… You have got to come in, he said. You have now spent too long getting worse, and it has got to the stage where it could go either way.”

Boris Johnson has written about his near-death experience from Covid-19 answering critics who thought he was exaggerating his illness.

Serialised in the Mail +, he wrote: “All I can say is that I felt truly lousy: the scratchy, breathless exhaustion that is ­familiar to Covid sufferers. I also know that at one stage my oxygen levels dropped to 72 per cent, and that below 70 per cent some nasty things start happening to your body.

“That night in April 2020, the doctors and nurses of St Thomas’ Hospital were preparing, if necessary, to intubate me – spike a hole in my trachea and stuff a tube down my ­windpipe to force-feed oxygen into my lungs.

“They mentioned the possibility, as they ­prepared to wheel me downstairs.

“Is that necessary? I said. Oh yes, they said, and made it sound like a routine procedure. What they didn’t explain is that, at that stage in the ­pandemic, patients who were intubated had about a 50 per cent chance of survival. Then I was being wheeled on a gurney into ICU – the intensive care unit.”

He finished: “One thing is for certain: at the moment it was announced I was going into ICU, when there was therefore believed to be a genuine chance that I was about to die, my popularity figures were higher than any PM in history.”

Boris Johnson has revealed he considered a daring raid on the Netherlands to grab doses of the Covid-19 vaccine from an EU warehouse.

Serialised in the Mail +, he wrote: “We knew exactly where the target was: I could see it on Google Earth. It looked pretty easy to burgle, if you know what to do.

“It was the plant where the EU had stowed five million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine – doses that the company was trying, in vain, to export to the UK.

“As long as people in my country were dying of Covid, which I am afraid they still were in substantial ­numbers, I believed it was my ­paramount duty to secure those doses, which belonged to the UK, and use them to save UK lives.”