He changed the course of history, but in the end they got him. Having dominated the political stage for a decade, Boris Johnson was brought down by the envy of Westminster and the spite of Whitehall.
Boris was different. He was the first celebrity to become prime minister and there were always plenty of jealous parliamentary Lilliputians trying to tie down this Gulliver of politics.
Boris was also the first to shun the Establishment’s serpentine way of doing business, in favour of trusting the instincts of the public. He was never forgiven for either.
When the history books come to be written, Boris Johnson will tower like a titan above his contemporaries, above all for delivering Brexit.
Having won the referendum, then routed the naysayers who doubted Britain’s ability to flourish outside the single market, Boris fought a general election on the simple slogan ‘Get Brexit done’.
Big hitter: While mayor of London, Boris spars at a gym in North Woolwich
We’ve done it! Carrie and Boris watch the 2019 election results on TV in No 10
He won by a landslide with a majority of 80 seats, while Labour collapsed. The new electoral map had Conservative MPs — lots of them — in regions where they had not been seen since the 1930s.
To grasp the significance of the Johnsonian achievement, it is enough to try to imagine the past few years without him. In all likelihood, there would have been no Brexit, no Tory triumph in 2019 and no rallying of the West to defend Ukraine.
Downing Street could now be occupied by Jeremy Corbyn and his sinister anti-Semites. Vladimir Putin would not be in retreat. And Britain would still be in thrall to Brussels. Yet despite his famous victories, Boris has been forced first out of office, then out of Parliament — by his own colleagues.
Rather than be damned as a liar by the Privileges Committee, then hounded out of the Commons by weasels who owe their very existence as MPs to him, Boris chose to leave politics with dignity.
We should be in no doubt, however, that the nation has lost a transformative political genius whose like we shall not see again.
Shakespeare, as usual, put it best. ‘Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves.’
It took more than merely the disloyalty of his party to undermine such a tribune of the people, more popular at his zenith than any prime minister since Churchill.
The machinations of the mandarins, the relentless sniping of the anti-Brexit media, the revenge of the Remainers: all played a part in this Caesar’s assassination.
From the moment in late March 2020 when he almost succumbed to Covid, creating a temporary power vacuum, Boris was on the back foot.
No sooner was he restored to health than the curse of Dominic Cummings and his ill-fated excursion to Barnard Castle gave the PM’s enemies their opportunity.
From then on, Boris was obliged to devote a large portion of his time to defending himself against a rising tide of trivial accusations, all of which were magnified into major scandals by a hostile Press.
Getting away from it all: On a holiday boat trip in Greece with Carrie in 2022
The former Prime Minister meeting Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv
‘We should be in no doubt, however, that the nation has lost a transformative political genius whose like we shall not see again’
‘In the end, he not only lost his chum but a by-election and was accused of ‘chumocracy’, too’
‘Boris was different. He was the first celebrity to become prime minister and there were always plenty of jealous parliamentary Lilliputians trying to tie down this Gulliver of politics’
This incessant barrage of balderdash diverted the beleaguered Boris from consolidating what should have been his monument: Britain’s recovery of its independence from the European Union.Those who profess disappointment in the squandered opportunities of Brexit should at least consider how adverse the conditions inherited by Boris actually were.
The mammoth task of making a success of Brexit was made infinitely harder by the pandemic and the restrictions in response, which in turn precipitated both an economic slump and a political crisis.
With hindsight — though some were wiser at the time — it is clear that the Bank of England printed too much money, which the Treasury spent on overgenerous handouts, while interest rates rose too little and too late.
It would, though, be unfair to blame Boris for the cost-of-living crisis. He trusted his Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and the experts in Whitehall to get the balance right. We are all living with the inflationary consequences of their mistakes.
The political crisis began sooner than the economic one, in the autumn of 2021. Boris had just lost his mother, Charlotte, a fine painter and a remarkable human being. He relied on her as much as on anyone else alive, as all who witnessed his distress at her funeral will testify.
With Covid still a mortal threat, there was no time to mourn his beloved mum. But the bereaved Boris then made some unforced errors. They began with the Owen Paterson affair, when personal loyalty blinded him to the optics of favouring a friend who had broken parliamentary rules.
In the end, he not only lost his chum but a by-election and was accused of ‘chumocracy’, too.
Hard on the heels of this setback came the excruciating saga that his foes christened ‘Partygate’.
Boris can certainly be faulted for the mismanagement of Downing Street during lockdown. As mayor of London, Boris had been surrounded by a small but excellent team, to whom he had delegated the administrative duties he found unpalatable. Downing Street was a much bigger organ of the body politic than City Hall, however, and Boris was not the first incumbent to find it ungovernable.
Due to the unprecedented scrutiny that Boris invariably attracted, however, his efforts to maintain morale at No 10 during the grim night watches of the pandemic were reframed by hostile commentators as a national disgrace.
A new narrative was fashioned out of gossamer to suggest it had been one rule for the prime minister and another for everyone else.
The police investigation of breaches of Covid rules at Downing Street seemed to corroborate this story. Boris himself received just one fixed-penalty notice for an impromptu ‘birthday party’, at which he had been present for a few minutes but never even had a piece of cake. In the mind’s eye of the British public, the image of a stricken Boris close to death in St Thomas’ Hospital was systematically erased.
Instead, we were bombarded with lurid pictures of Johnson’s lockdown jollies, often contrasted with the sombre sight of the late Queen sitting alone at her husband’s funeral.
Johnson trying out ceremonial shoes at the Meiji Jingu Shrine in the centre of Tokyo in 2016
The former PM looks at old photographs of London with students at Abbots Green Primary Academy in Bury St Edmunds
Johnson walking a bull during a visit to Darnford Farm in Banchory near Aberdeen
The former Mayor of London slips during a tug of war on London Poppy Day in 2015
Johnson pictured getting stuck on a zip line in Victoria Park, London, in 2012
This artful switching of imagery accomplished what no speeches by Sir Keir Starmer could ever have done: the diminution of the popularity that had always enabled Boris to defy political gravity.
Enter the mandarins, adept at backstabbing. ‘Our great United Kingdom is actually entirely run by a lady called Sue Gray, the head of ethics or something in the Cabinet Office,’ said Sir Oliver Letwin.
She it was whom Boris entrusted with the official report on Partygate, notable mainly for its failure to produce anything resembling a smoking gun. This panjandrum of probity promptly skedaddled to work for Sir Keir Starmer.
There followed an agonising period as a wounded PM saw his support slip away. The Pincher affair — in which deputy chief whip Chris Pincher belatedly resigned after allegedly groping two men in a London club — was the last straw. Boris, who had known of similar complaints against Pincher when he was appointed, tried manfully to save his government, only to resign as party leader with a typical Hollywood flourish: ‘Hasta la vista, baby!’
Meanwhile, back in the real world outside SW1, a huge Russian army had invaded Ukraine, unleashing the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945.
Unlike the Establishment, which had as usual ignored the warning signals, Boris was ready.
While Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz were still trying to appease Putin and Joe Biden wanted Volodymyr Zelensky to flee, the British provided arms and training that enabled Ukraine to win the battle for Kyiv.
Recognising a man after his own heart in the Ukrainian president, Boris rose to the occasion. It should be a matter of patriotic pride that he took the lead on Ukraine, persuading our allies to give Zelensky the tools to finish the job.
Along with getting Brexit done, setting the course on Ukraine will be remembered as one of Boris’s greatest achievements.
Scarcely less controversial at the time was Boris’s decision early in the pandemic to throw everything at developing a Covid vaccine that would be cheap, effective and British. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was the result. Rather than follow the bureaucratic European model, British regulators worked in parallel with the scientists. The vaccine was rolled out by a team led by a brilliant woman seconded from the private sector, Dame Kate Bingham.
Johnson plays rugby with Japanese elementary school children in Tokyo in 2015
The former MP visits Sam Cole Food Group in Lowestoft, Britain in 2016
‘To grasp the significance of the Johnsonian achievement, it is enough to try to imagine the past few years without him’
‘Along with getting Brexit done, setting the course on Ukraine will be remembered as one of Boris’s greatest achievements’
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was a British triumph. It has saved millions of lives around the world. And Boris deserves his share of the credit.
Already, in his mercurial career as a journalist, he had demonstrated an aptitude for getting to the heart of the matter.
Boris has always been a visionary statesman. He has an eye for the big picture, seldom for the details. But there is a place in British politics, surely, for ‘the vision thing’ — and certainly for a force of nature such as Boris. Despite his background at Eton and Oxford, he has preserved his role as the eternal outsider. Boris has never been a ‘House of Commons man’, even when, as now, that might have been in his interest.
When he made his first foray into politics, during the Blair era more than two decades ago, I predicted in print that Boris would be the next prime minister but two. He was, in fact, the next but three.
Having stood far above the field as mayor of London, Boris similarly outclassed his rivals as prime minister. Some of them will be gloating now, but the country will rue the day when the most gifted statesman of his generation felt obliged to turn his back on Parliament.
Britain can ill afford to cold-shoulder leaders capable of mastering the imminent threats: artificial intelligence, immigration, climate change, China.
We shall miss Boris Johnson, with his wicked wit and unruly hair. We shall miss this blithe spirit who accompanied us through dark times.
But we shall not miss the unedifying spectacle of a true leader drummed out of public life.
