Did Boris Johnson’s brush with death change him?
Ever since his near-deadly bout of coronavirus last year, debate has raged about the extent to which the experience changed Boris Johnson’s approach to tackling the pandemic.
His most-loyal aides have always insisted it did not change him at all, but some allies now privately concede he did emerge from his hospital stay a different man.
“That whole near-death experience made him look at this through a different lens,” said one. “After he came out of hospital . . . he started talking about how we could lose more people to Covid than we lost in the Second World War.”
Irrespective of the effect his illness had on him, Johnson’s stay in intensive care was almost certainly the closest Britain has come to losing a prime minister in office since Lord Palmerston in 1865.
Johnson was taken into hospital on Sunday, April 5 last year, and while he fought for his life, another battle was going on at the heart of government.
“It became a bit of a power struggle between different ministers,” said one well-placed source. “We were trying to keep team spirit together but Michael [Gove] and Dom Raab were taking chunks out of each other, it was just awful.
On the evening of Thursday, March 26 Johnson tested positive for the virus, telling the nation he had “mild symptoms” but was continuing to lead the Government while self-isolating.
But as his mandatory one-week self-isolation period neared its end, he was getting worse.
“It was obvious he was getting more ill,” said a close source. “He was doing video messages for Twitter but he was taking five or six goes to get it right, where he is normally a one-take guy.
“Whenever people told him to take it easy he kept saying, ‘Strong like bull, strong like bull.’ Except he wasn’t. One time he said that and he beat his chest, which triggered an uncontrollable coughing fit.”
By the evening of Friday, April 3, staff were so concerned a doctor was called, and on the Sunday he called his key staff to tell them he was going into hospital as a “precautionary measure”.
“There was such a change in him,” said one member of his team. “He wasn’t fully engaging in conversations and he was detached.”
Officials checked he wanted Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, to take over if he became incapacitated, and he confirmed Raab was “100 per cent” his choice.
By the next day, Monday April 6, “the doctors were telling us it was looking pretty grisly”, one source said.
A phone call from St Thomas’ Hospital confirmed that.
“They said they were going to move him to intensive care. They said it was a ghastly situation because it was 50-50 whether he would need to go on to a ventilator, and if he did go on to a ventilator it was 50-50 whether he would survive.”
In fact, the survival odds for Covid patients who were intubated were even lower than that at the time.
Johnson was discharged from hospital on April 12, a week later.
He returned to Downing Street on April 27, “probably a week too early”, one aide now admits, and told the nation there were “real signs now that we are passing through the peak” of the virus. Two days later, his son Wilfred was born.
So what effect did the Prime Minister’s darkest hour have on him?
“I do think it changed him,” said one Johnson friend. “He had been very hesitant about putting the country into lockdown, but after he came out of hospital, it’s all been about protecting lives.
“He started talking about how we could lose more people to Covid than we lost in the Second World War.”
Britain has already lost more people to Covid than died in the Blitz, but the war cost 450,000 British lives in total, or 0.94 per cent of the population.
To date, Covid has taken
125,000 lives, or around 0.2 per cent of the population.
Those most loyal to Johnson continue to hold to the official line that the events of last April made no difference to his policies.
“He was pretty determined before he went into hospital, and he was pretty determined when he came out,” said one.
Another said: “It didn’t change him at all. Both before and after he went into hospital he kept saying it was important the cure wasn’t worse than the virus.”