Johnson, who was educated at Eton and Oxford, had made a name for himself in the media, but when he was still 30 he told his friends that he wanted more. For someone who had declared at age eight that he wanted to become “world king,” it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
“They don’t put statues on journalists,” he once said.
First elected deputy in 2001, he continued his writing, reaching controversy one after another with his comment.
He challenged conventional political wisdom, survived the spectacles and was caught lying and even overcame his marital infidelities to become the most notable and colorful British politician of his generation.
But if the Boris Project, as its aspirations were known, had always seemed inevitable, it was also inevitable that it would end in tears.
Johnson, 58, announced Thursday that he would step down as leader of the Conservative Party. However, he can claim to be the most important British politician of his generation. He will be remembered in many ways by many people, but ultimately as the man who pulled Britain out of the European Union.
To many voters it seemed above politics. Surely beyond party politics. It was his own separate brand.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during a media conference on the coronavirus. His own staff did not abide by the blocking rules. Credit: AP
In the Brexit referendum and the 2019 elections, his celebrity and his famous irreverence helped bring out the discontented. His rallies of “Get back in control” and “Make Brexit done” were effective in motivating those who don’t want to vote. They helped push Leave above the line to win 52% of the vote compared to Remain’s 48%. They also helped deliver seats to the “Red Wall”, a set of constituencies mainly in the Midlands, North England and North East Wales that had historically supported Labor, but were changed to Conservatives on 2019.
During those general elections, Johnson presented himself as the only person who could fulfill the promise of Brexit, although he promised to invest in the left-wing areas of England.
Having defended bankers during the financial crisis, he now criticized London’s preeminence. He built a new electoral coalition by uniting the rural areas of the south of England with seats in the old industrial cities, where the loyalty of the working class to the Labor Party had been torn apart.
He consolidated his image as a “Heineken politician”; one that could reach parts of the country that other conservatives could not.
He won with a majority of 80 seats, the largest of the Conservatives since 1987. The victory was so great that it looked like Johnson could enjoy a decade as prime minister.
But while he had previously been hailed as an “adorable jester,” his critics argued that after courting progressives in London as mayor, he had become a sort of British Trump, someone who would encourage xenophobia and ugly racism and would change his party from a far-right populist group that polarized the country and threatened to break up the UK.
Of course, it wasn’t Donald Trump. Nowhere near. But he has approached this week when he threatened to barricade at 10 Downing Street and ignore the massive resignations that led to his downfall.
He once again differentiated himself from Trump in terms of climate, where he became the world’s most open leader in ambitious actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps one day those on the progressive side of politics will recognize that it played a key role in getting the richest nations in the world to talk about decarbonization as an economic issue.
Boris Johnson was greeted with applause as he returned to No. 10 after winning the 2019 election. Credit: AP
Boris Johnson was his own separate brand.
In October last year, Johnson’s father, Stanley, told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that his son’s critics were often too quick to “eliminate” him and underestimated his intellect. and its genuine interest in the environment, especially with regard to biodiversity and the proliferation of plastics.
When the UK finally left the EU on 31 January 2020, Johnson promised the start of a “new act in our great national drama”.
He praised the 2020s as a “decade of prosperity and opportunity” for post-Brexit Britain, saying the UK could “turn the page on the division” of the previous three years.
Within a month, COVID-19 struck and found itself contemplating health restrictions that went against its libertarian instincts. It was painfully slow to order national blockades, causing the unnecessary death of thousands of people.
Discharge of patients without testing in accordance with government policy brought COVID-19 to nursing homes. But he gained public sympathy when he himself almost died of the virus that year.
Rapid deployment of the vaccine and billions of pounds of state support consolidated its position.
But it is how he behaved in private, not his policies, that undid him.
“There’s a pattern in Boris’ life, and it’s not the lust of charges, or applause, or susceptible women, that marks that pattern with red warning ink, ”Matthew Parris, former Conservative MP and columnist The Times politician wrote even before Hastings.
“It is casual dishonesty, cruelty, betrayal; and, under betrayal, the emptiness of real ambition: the ambition to do anything useful with the office once achieved.
Things began to turn against Johnson in late 2020 when his key aide, Dominic Cummings, traveled hundreds of miles to Barnard Castle at a time when the British had been ordered to stay home.
Cummings had been the architect of Johnson’s best hits: Brexit and the 2019 election victory. And so the prime minister went against a howl of public disgust and was trapped by her husband.
At the time, Johnson said he had “regrets,” but only because of the anger and confusion the audience felt for his assistant’s 800-mile round trip. It had a great political cost.
But Cummings, involved in a power struggle within No. 10, soon resigned and spent his time out of politics attacking Johnson, whom he compares to a shopping cart, shattering from side to side. corridor due to his indecision.
Dominic Cummings’ unauthorized driving through England during the confinement became a point of pain for the Johnson government already struggling. Credit: Getty
Probability issues also affected the Johnson administration, with questions about who paid for his holiday in Mustique in the Caribbean in early 2020 and about costly renovations to his Downing Street apartment.
These stories emerged and faded, but never completely disappeared.
In November last year, he demanded his party vote against the suspension of his fellow Brexit and former cabinet minister Owen Paterson, who had breached the rules on paid lobbying. It provoked indignation and provoked a shameful twist and apology. And with each mishandling, more questions were raised about the prime minister’s trial.
Perhaps the hammer blow was the revelations of the Downing Street festivities during the pandemic. And it was Cummings who helped expose these infractions.
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In December, Johnson approved an independent investigation into allegations that he and other officials held parties to break the blockade during periods when the public was under severe restrictions.
His hand was forced after a stream of reports in the newspapers sparked an explosive public outburst over what became known as a partygate.
The investigation, led by Officer Sue Gray, was temporarily halted when Metropolitan Police began their own investigation into the events and ordered Gray to draft his findings until officers had completed their investigations.
On April 12, after months of speculation and building evidence against the prime minister, Johnson was fined £ 50 by police for attending his own birthday party in May 2020. He was the British Prime Minister who broke the law while in office.
Last month, things came to a close with a no-confidence vote, which narrowly survived, but two shocking by-elections lost.
For many Conservative MPs, the last drop was a changing official account of what the Prime Minister had learned about the inappropriate behavior of Conservative MP Chris Pincher before appointing him as minister.
None of these incidents deserved so much mention in Johnson’s resignation speech Thursday evening (AEST), but that didn’t surprise his colleagues. Again, he suggested that he had done nothing wrong; instead, he fell victim to a “relentless sleigh” and an “eccentric” decision by Conservative MPs.
“Obviously he’s very angry,” a former minister told the Financial Times. “Because, of course, it’s never his fault.”
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After three years in power, Johnson lost his party and his country.
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