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

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.”

Russell Findlay has been elected as the new leader of the Scottish Conservatives, beating Murdo Fraser and Meghan Gallacher.

The new leader won 2,565 votes, the party’s returning officer Leonard Wallace announced on Friday, with Murdo Fraser coming second with 1,187 votes and Meghan Gallacher in third with 403 votes.

The turnout was 60%, with Mr Wallace announcing the party has just shy of 7,000 members, 4,155 of whom voted in the leadership contest.

Sir Keir Starmer has said he was prepared to be mocked over the “sausages” gaffe in his Labour conference speech.

The prime minister butchered a call for Hamas to release the hostages in Gaza, instead demanding “the return of the sausages” before swiftly correcting himself.

Asked about the mistake he told reporters: “I just mangled the beginning of the word.”

He added: “These things are there to give you all the opportunity to rib me.”

The blunder in his conference speech on Tuesday was swiftly picked up on social media.

The Conservatives posted on X: “Keir Starmer uses his first big speech as Prime Minister to call for the return of the sausages.”

UK leaders “shouldn’t pull our punches” if they disagree with the American president, Emily Thornberry has said after Sir Keir Starmer met with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Ms Thornberry, House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Donald Trump may be the president of the United States in a couple of months’ time so of course, it’s important to have meetings with him and to build a relationship with him.

“Whatever criticisms one may have of Donald Trump, the point is that the office of president is one that needs to be properly respected and the Americans are very close friends of ours.”

The Labour politician added: “I think that this is an initial meeting, so there needs to be a certain amount of relationship building and we take it from there.

“I do think that if there are things the American president does or says that we disagree with, then we shouldn’t pull our punches.”