Boris Johnson reveals how he thought he 'might have carked it' when in intensive care with Covid
28 September 2024, 11:50 | Updated: 28 September 2024, 11:59
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson believed he “might have carked it” when he was in intensive care with Covid, according to an extract of his memoir.
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Johnson, who became PM in July 2019, spent several days in intensive care at St Thomas' Hospital in London with Covid in April 2020.
The former PM was initially admitted to hospital with "persistent symptoms" before being moved to intensive care after his symptoms "worsened", Downing Street revealed at the time.
Writing in his new memoir, Unleashed, Johnson has described not wanting to fall asleep on his first night in intensive care “partly in case I never woke up”.
He also recalled feeling “rotten” with “guilt” and “political embarrassment” in the days before he was admitted to hospital after testing positive at the end of March.
Following his release from hospital, the then prime minister spent some time at Chequers with his now-wife Carrie, and he recalled joining in with the clap for the NHS on a Thursday evening.
“I clapped with deep emotion because my lungs were telling me that I had been through something really pretty nasty, and that if it hadn’t been for Jenny and Luis, fiddling with those oxygen tubes all night with all their skill and experience, I think I might have carked it,” he wrote.
On his admission to ICU, Mr Johnson said he “started to doze, but didn’t want to sleep – partly in case I never woke up, or in case they decided to perform some stealthy tracheotomy without letting me know”.
There were a number of days between Mr Johnson announcing he had tested positive for Covid at the end of March 2020 and going into hospital at the beginning of April, and he described himself as feeling “so rotten”.
“It wasn’t just the physical distress; it was the guilt, the political embarrassment of it all,” he said.
“I needed to be out there, leading the country from the front, sorting the PPE, fixing the care homes, driving the quest for a cure.”
Johnson later stepped down as an MP after a Tory-majority committee found he mislead parliament over 'partygate' on multiple occasions.
The investigation by the committee was launched in the wake of Sue Gray's report, which blamed a "failure of leadership and judgement" for lockdown-busting parties that took place in Number 10 during the COVID pandemic.
This is just one of a number of revelations from Johnson’s memoir with the former PM also revealing a secret plot was devised to invade Holland and seize Covid vaccines.
Johnson said he drew up plans for British special forces to step in after "futile" negotiations with EU chiefs over the release of five million vaccines.
He writes he intended to take matters into his own hands when supplies were "kidnapped" by Brussels bureaucrats in a warehouse in Leiden.
He convened a meeting of senior military officials in March 2021 to discuss the plans.
Read more: Boris Johnson reveals secret plot to invade Holland and seize Covid vaccines
The extract says the deputy chief of the defence staff, Lieutenant General Doug Chalmers, told the PM the plan was "certainly feasible", using rigid inflatable boats to navigate Dutch canals.
"They would then rendezvous at the target; enter; secure the hostage goods, exfiltrate using an articulated lorry, and make their way to the Channel ports," Mr Johnson writes.
But the senior officer said it would not be possible to do this undetected, with lockdowns meaning the authorities might observe the raid, meaning the UK would "have to explain why we are effectively invading a long-standing Nato ally".
It was later concluded that the idea was "nuts".
