The Tragic Fall of Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson was one of the most consequential politicians of the post-war era. But he was a colossus with nothing behind the facade.
Boris Johnson, former UK prime minister.
Source: Bloomberg
Boris Johnson once claimed that he was leaving journalism for politics because nobody erects statues to journalists. He is now leaving politics for journalism again, or at least for a life of writing and speechifying, but the country is no more likely to erect a statue to him than it is to Liz Truss.
The British establishment hates Johnson as intensely as it has hated anyone since Oswald Mosley. Rishi Sunak’s Tory Party hopes vainly that the former prime minister will ride into the sunset. Sunak returned from his bilateral meeting with Joe Biden — a British PM’s idea of heaven — only to find his predecessor yet again seizing the headlines. The first part of Friday was spent talking about Johnson’s scandalous honors list which awarded peerages and knighthoods to gargoyles and cronies. Then in the evening politics went into meltdown when he released a bitter jeremiad saying that he is standing down as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip with immediate effect.