Unleashed: Big Dog Boris Johnson fights back

As a “chastened” Tory Party convened for its conference this week, and the wider country remained mired in the gloom that has enveloped it since Keir Starmer’s “loveless victory”, excerpts from Boris Johnson’s soon-to-be-released memoir provided a “much-needed tonic”, said the Daily Mail (which had acquired the serialisation rights).

In them, the former PM gives a vivid account of his leadership during the Covid crisis: he describes how close he came to “carking it” when he was hospitalised with the virus in April 2020; he describes his elation (“kerchingeroo”) at the success of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine; he recalls how – when the EU impounded millions of doses in a Dutch warehouse – he asked if British Special Forces could be deployed to retrieve them (before dismissing the idea as “nuts”); and he insists that the reports of wild parties and other breaches of Covid rules at Downing Street were absurdly overblown by his political foes and embittered former advisers. “I saw no cake,” he says. “I ate no blooming cake. If this was a party, it was the feeblest event in the history of human festivity.”

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