Boris Johnson

The result of what would happen if Draco Malfoy got into British politics and developed a drinking problem

How an Empire ends U.K. Politics

God Save the King?

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“”You're a nasty piece of work, aren't you?

—Eddie Mair to Johnson

“” Idiots love Johnson's contrived, clownish TV persona, and so will vote for him even if his policies mean they'll be living under a flyover and cooking rats over a brazier.

—An amusingly accurate description from The Daily Mash.

“”Camilla Tominey, journalist: Do people misunderstand you? Johnson: They understand me too well. Tominey: So when people criticize you as a buffoon? Another criticism is that you are a pathological liar?

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel "Great Supine, Protoplasmic Invertebrate Jellies" who sucks his own Johnson (1964–), is a smooth talking wannabe authoritarian who served as Mayor of London (2008-16), Foreign Secretary (July 2016–July 2018), and — somehow — former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding Theresa May as Leader of the Conservative Party on 24 July 2019, and then securing a massive majority on 12 December 2019. He has at times been described as a libertarian, and at other times as “looking like a crackhead's sofa”. A former columnist who got in trouble for yellow journalism, the man was elected mayor because he was funny once on Have I Got News For You and climbed the ladder from there. Johnson wants to be Winston Churchill so badly it hurts, despite having neither the political acumen nor leadership qualities of Churchill.

Despite (or perhaps because of) his buffoonish attitude, Boris has a knack for soothing the media, always managing to dodge scandals that would sink other, less skilled spin doctors.

Before the Brexit vote, he drove up and down the country in a German-made bus liveried with demonstrable lies. Presumably, then, his career in politics is over? Of course not, he was handed one of the great offices of state: Foreign Secretary, the British equivalent of CIA Director/Secretary of State. He resigned from this post in July, 2018, to completely avoid any responsibility for the gigantic mess that he had been crucial in creating protest the way Theresa May intended to deliver Brexit.

Johnson became the freshly-minted Prime Minister of the UK following the resignation of Theresa May, when he won a contest "decided by a 160,000-strong Tory membership that is 70% male, 97% white, 86% social class ABC1, 50% of whom read the Telegraph or the Daily Mail and who have an average age of 57". Meritocracy and democracy doing well in Britain, as always (Boris too can call himself a "democratically-elected leader"). He has started really well, by losing his first seven more than eight parliamentary votes and a Supreme Court case that ruled he (or more accurately his pet Victorian Jacob Rees-Mogg) lied to the Queen. He has allied his party with "neo-Nazi and anti-Muslim parties across Europe."

Bigotry

Johnson's sexism on display while he was a "journalist" at the Daily Telegraph

Johnson has made multiple sexist, racist and homophobic comments throughout his career, for which he would like to keep getting a free pass each and every time because he was 'just joking' — or perhaps just because he's a Tory. Examples of his bigotry include:

• Multiple uses of "hot totty" (i.e., women) and "tottymeter" (i.e., penis) and other inappropriate attempts at sexualizing and demeaning female politicians
• Accusing the Labour Party of teaching homosexuality in schools, comparing gay marriage to bestiality in his 2001 book Friends, Voters, Countrymen, calling the former First Secretary of State Peter Mandelson's supporters "tank-topped bumboys"
• Referring to African as "piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles" in 2002, comparing Muslim women in burqas to "letter boxes" and bank robbers in 2018, and saying that Islamophobia is a natural reaction for non-Muslims in 2005

Background and personal life

"Oxford Union Becomes Ha-Ha Fest": What else is to be expected when Boris is elected President?

“”I never really knew the meaning of the word "shameless" until I beheld the career of Boris Johnson.

—Robert Harris

Boris Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 in New York, USA, educated at Eton, (King's Scholar) and Balliol College, Oxford (Brackenbury Scholar in Classics). The pollster Frank Luntz has claimed that while at Oxford Johnson touted himself as a supporter of the Social Democratic Party, then a dominant current at the university, as a strategy to win the Union presidency, though Johnson denies he was more than the SDP's preferred candidate. Along with David Cameron, he was a member of Oxford's Bullingdon Club, a student dining society known for its raucous feasts that often involved trashing everything and then paying cash for the damages. In 2008, he claimed to have smoked "dope" and that he "was once given cocaine" while at university, "but I sneezed and so it did not go up my nose. In fact, I may have been doing icing sugar."

He is an old-fashioned Tory Boy™ by genetics, i.e. distantly related to the royal family. He's classically liberal in the British sense: socially liberal, but with an appreciation for traditional institutions, e.g. the inevitability of a ruling class. However, BoJo's past comments on homosexuality, race, the British Empire and its Commonwealth, the War on Terror, and Islam suggest an altogether different kind of Tory.

After graduating in 1987, Johnson became a trainee reporter with the Times newspaper but was sacked within a year for falsifying a quotation from his godfather Colin Lucas.

Over a decade and a half later, then-Conservative leader Michael Howard sacked Johnson as shadow arts minister in 2004 for lying about an affair with Spectator journalist Petronella Wyatt.

During his time as Mayor of London, he repeatedly did favours for US businesswomen Jennifer Arcuri, with whom he was having a four-year affair, inviting her on three overseas trade missions despite not her being qualified and giving her business a total of £126,000 of public money. He is now being reinvestigated for the appointment of another woman he was having an affair with (who had his child!) Helen Macintyre, another women who he didn't declare an interest with as Mayor of London, a scandal which he barely escaped censure from in 2010.

As recently as 2015, while he was Mayor, he was a climate change denier. More recently he has become a delayer, which is only slightly less bad.

Brexit campaigner

“”Donald Trump is popular because he seems so like the sort of figure who’d appear in a drama about a big-hitting businessman who takes on the political establishment and wins the presidency. It’s also why his campaign ads feel like something you’ve seen somewhere before but in another dimension...Boris Johnson’s main selling point is that he feels like how someone would be portrayed in a comedy drama about an eccentric good egg tripping up the establishment and becoming prime minister.

—Armando Iannucci

“”My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.

—Johnson's strategy on Brexit

BoJo did a number on London: He helped make it a haven of the super-rich, then ran a campaign saying Don't listen to the super-rich in London.

He was originally pro-European Union. Then he, Michael Gove (former MP and News Corp columnist), and Nigel Farage (UKIP Leader) rode the backlash at UK working conditions out of Europe, each one surfing on the backs of empty promises about trade, immigration and national devices. (NHS etc.) Boris later became the figurehead of a successful campaign to kick Cameron out, but Gove managed to torpedo Johnson's own effort to replace Cameron.

First crack at the Tory leadership

Boris announced his withdrawal from the leadership race, after Gove, who is more weasel than man, threw his own hat in the ring despite an agreement to support Johnson. This bit of political treachery sabotaged Johnson's bid, leaving Gove, whom everyone had just seen knifing his colleague in the back, going head to head with Theresa May. The tories plumped for May over the treacherous backstabbing weasel. In the long run, Gove had done Johnson a favour as the premiership became something of a poisoned chalice immediately after Brexit. Until the next opportunity, Johnson had to console himself with Foreign Secretary.

Barack Obama

Boris Johnson endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, but nine years later said that:

Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009 … It was a bust of Winston Churchill — the great British wartime leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years. But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington … Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire — of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.

These comments mentioning Obama's Kenyan ancestry  were described by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell as "another example of dog whistle racism from senior Tories" and the worst of Tea Party rhetoric. The Washington Post notes that Johnson's comments "mentioned a [conspiracy] theory, prominent among some right-wing Americans, that Mr. Obama is motivated by a radical anti-imperialist agenda and that 'the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire' motivated the removal of the bust"; this led Financial Times columnist John Gapper to ironically tweet: "So is Boris Johnson against the European Union because he's part-Turkish?"

On the actual content of what Mr. Johnson has said, the allegation about Churchill's bust being removed from the White House has been debunked as early as July 2012; the bust of Churchill is currently placed outside the Treaty Room on the second floor of the house, where Obama claims to look at it every day. Clearly, this is not enough for Boris — only once per day!? That commie, Empire-hating bastard! And this irrational fear of the old colonies rising up — which was exacerbated by Cold War hysteria about national liberation movements in South Africa — is exactly the type of fearmongering which led to Thatcher denouncing Nelson Mandela's ANC as "a typical terrorist organisation". Indeed, one of those people fighting against the British in Kenya — as mentioned in passing by Nigel Farage in regards to defending Johnson's comments — was his grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, who was imprisoned and tortured by the British during Kenya's Mau Mau Uprising. Even if Obama were to remove Churchill from the White House — which he patently did not — then one cannot really blame him for this.

Foreign secretary

Appointment

First day in the Foreign Office.

“”In the light of the Foreign Secretary's display of chronic "foot-in-mouth" disease, when deciding on Cabinet positions, does the Prime Minister now regret that pencilling "FO" against his name should have been an instruction, not a job offer?

—Peter Dowd MP, displaying an excellent sense of humeur.

Johnson was made Britain's Fine Foreign Secretary (FFS) in July 2016 by Theresa May. This decision was made in order to make him a figurehead with little power. and ensure that he would be out of the country most of the time, unable to mobilise backbenchers against her premiership and forces to take responsibility for problems related to Brexit, i.e. a whipping boy.

Johnson's appointment was seen by many (including former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt) as a sick joke. Labour MP Angela Eagle's was fighting her own to be leader of the Labour Party (and topple Jeremy Corbyn) at the time of the announcement; her live reaction and quick turn away from the camera to swear is very amusing.

Johnson has been criticised by journalists and foreign politicians for his statements about other countries, including:

• Saying that the Commonwealth "supplies [Queen Elizabeth II] with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies". In this column, he described the Congo as follows: "No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird."
• On the effects of colonialism in Uganda: "If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain."
• Equating Papua New Guinea with "orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing."
• Reciting a colonialist poem for no reason but causing offence whilst in Yangon's most sacred Buddhist site, where his own ambassador to Myanmar had to tell him to stop several times.

Which of course makes him an excellent choice to be Foreign Secretary...

Diplomacy Time™

Johnson's visit to Turkey in May 2016 was somewhat tense due to his having won a poetry competition about the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, four months earlier, which went as follows:

“”There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn't even stop to thankera.

In a stopped clock moment in in December 2016, he said that Saudi Arabia was "puppeteering and playing proxy wars" throughout the Middle East, which caused a rift between him and Theresa May. Despite this, Johnson supported the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen and refused to block UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, stating there was no clear evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law by the Saudis in Yemen.

In November 2016, Johnson told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe—a British-Iranian dual citizen serving a five-year prison sentence in Iran allegedly for "plotting to topple the Iranian government" by running "a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran"—had been "simply teaching people journalism". These remarks appear to have put her at risk, prompting condemnation from politicians across the spectrum including Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and London Mayor Sadiq Khan, leading to calls for Boris Johnson to be sacked. Zaghari-Ratcliffe had said that her visit had been made simply for her daughter to meet her grandparents. Johnson stated he had been misquoted and that nothing he said had justified Zaghari-Ratcliffe's sentence.

In April 2017, Theresa May had to convince the EU that Britain wasn't preparing for war with Spain due to comments made by Johnson and other senior politicians. In May 2017, during the 2017 United Kingdom general election, he was apprehended by a woman in a Sikh gurdwara for discussing alcohol and ending tariffs on Indian whiskey there (alcohol is forbidden in Sikhism).

In September 2017, Johnson reiterated his "£350m a week" red bus lie in a Telegraph op-ed. This led Sir David Norgrove (chair of the non-partisan UK Statistics Authority) to call this a "clear misuse of official statistics".

Johnson promised while in Northern Ireland that Brexit would leave the Irish border "absolutely unchanged" but declined to say how. However, in February 2018, Johnson said Northern Ireland may have to accept border controls after Brexit, which is absolutely a change.

In March 2018, Johnson apologised for his "inadvertent sexism" after being reprimanded by the Speaker of the House of Commons for calling Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry by her husband's surname (Nugee).

In June 2018, Johnson was reported as having said "fuck business" when asked about corporate concerns regarding a hard Brexit.

Prime Minister

“”I am the führer. I'm the king who takes the decisions.

—Johnson, according to one of his advisers

Finally, Boris got his heart's desire, replacing Theresa May as Prime Minister on 24 July 2019 after winning a leadership election against Jeremy Hunt. During his campaign, he had promised both tax cuts and spending increases, which would normally be contradictory (less income plus more outgoings equals problems), so it wasn't exactly clear how he was going to run the country. On entering office, he rapidly set about remodeling the government, sacking many loyal to May and Hunt. It emerged that his plan for Brexit was to drop out without a deal, despite the bad effect that would have on British industry.

Mainstreaming the extremists

While Cameron and May were already far-right by any sane measure, Johnson's first cabinet reshuffle threw out everyone who explicitly opposed him regardless of how conservative they already were. He packed his cabinet with racist nutjobs and elitist hardliners, such as Priti Patel (a former supporter of capital punishment) as Home Secretary, in charge of policing and immigration. Other appointments included Thatcherite ex-banker Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer (replaced by Rishi Sunak in February 2020 after a falling out over special advisors), staunch Brexiteer Dominic Raab as Foreign Secretary, fellow leaver Michael Gove as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster (a sort of all-purpose fixer position), and another Leaver, Steve Barclay, remaining as Brexit secretary.

His special advisers come partly from his time as Mayor of London but also from pro-Brexit group Vote Leave, hard-right institutions like the TaxPayers' Alliance and the Legatum Institute, and from right-wing and right-libertarian publications like Guido Fawkes and Spiked. Dominic Cummings, formerly master strategist at Vote Leave, became his de facto chief of staff (a move that seemed to presage an early election). The head of his policy unit is Munira Mirza of Spiked magazine and before that communist-turned-libertarian magazine Living Marxism; she advised him on arts policy while he was Mayor. Johnson's political secretary is Danny Kruger, a former Tory parliamentary candidate who called for a "period of creative destruction in the public services", as well as working for Vote Leave, the Legatum Institute, as a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, and a speechwriter for David Cameron before his 2010 election win. Ross Kempsell, a former journalist for TalkRadio and Guido Fawkes with no policy experience, is advising Johnson on public policy reform. Chloe Westley, formerly of the TaxPayers' Alliance, Vote Leave, and right-wing student organisation Turning Point UK, is another adviser.

National infrastructure

Johnson has long supported infrastructure development, so long as he gets to take credit for it and doesn't have to do anything.

The TfL and DfT developed plans for CrossRail between 2001 and 2007, whilst Labour were in Government and Ken Livingstone was Mayor of London. The CrossRail Act 2008 was passed by the Labour-led Parliament in July 2008. Boris likes to take credit for all of this, having become Mayor of London in May 2008.

He loves infrastructure so much that on becoming Prime Minister he launched the Oakervee Review of HS2, which inconveniently concluded that HS2 was still much-needed and shouldn't be cancelled. Reading the room, he spent 2020 arguing that HS2 would create jobs, "fire up the economy" and become "the spine of our country's transport network".

However, Johnson doesn't like spines (being a Great Supine, Protoplasmic Invertebrate Jelly himself). In November 2021 he cancelled the Eastern Leg of HS2 to Leeds, as well as Northern Powerhouse Rail. This made northern councils and leaders very angry.

Just 6 months later in May 2022 at the opening of CrossRail, Johnson stated:

Better transport grows the economy, levels up opportunity, and creates jobs ... The real thing for us now is to think about Crossrail 2, the old Chelsea-Hackney line. — Boris Johnson, shortly after de-funding TfN and TfL

Determined to stick the knife in, he claimed that the new cross-London line would "benefit the whole country".

A week later he cancelled the HS2 Golborne Link. Later that month, the RMT union led a strike of railworkers from both the mainline network and the London Underground, protesting massive redundancies, poor working conditions, a 50% cut to safety inspections and the de-funding of improvement projects.

Trump-style chaos

Johnson's premiership was fueled by disruption, chaos, lies, boorish behavior, grift, and a cheerful contempt for ordinary norms, expectations and rules — which, from some people's perspective, was a positive "feature" of Johnson's government, not a "bug". Nonetheless, one can only run a chaotic administration, marked by constant staff turnover and multiple scandals, for so long before "boring" politics, free of chaos, suddenly starts looking quite attractive.

Racist immigration law

The Nationality and Borders Act, which became law on April 2022, makes the Home Secretary more powerful in response to the migrant crisis, allowing the Home Secretary to strip citizenship and remove those who "have no right" to be in the UK. Deprivation of citizenship, previously, was only possible for naturalized citizens and only possible if that naturalized citizen committed treason. It has been used against members of Al Qaeda and DAESH, but the new law would allow the Home Office to carry this out without having to tell the person in question. This means sitting MPs can in theory have their citizenship removed and made stateless without them even being given notice. This also means, without the rights of citizenship, anybody in the UK can be deprived of their right to a fair trial and are therefore eligible for the death penalty. It also creates a "two-tier system" for refugees in the UK depending on their method of arrival, with those who come via unauthorized routes – such as small boats or in the back of lorries – criminalized and penalized. This means Ukrainian war refugees can possibly be criminalized by the British government under this new law.

Human rights is anti-British

Johnson wants to scrap the Human Rights Act, publishing a 123-page document explaining his proposed bill which would do just that. The Human Rights Act is exactly what it says on the tin, compelling the government to respect the rights to life, freedom of speech, privacy and property, among others — and bans discrimination, torture, and forced labour. Britain passed the Human Rights Act 1998 under Tony Blair, which "obligated UK courts to interpret legislation so it is compatible with the European Convention of Human Rights." It is overseen by a court in Strasbourg and separate from the European Union. But the Tories, Dominic Raab in particular, believe the Human Rights Act is "irredeemably European," explicitly saying in 2009 “I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights.” Why is this scaring experts? Raab is the Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister. But Johnson's government wants to redefine "British values" to "exclude human rights as understood for over two decades." The new bill will clarify that there is "no requirement to follow" the Strasbourg case law, and also say that UK courts "cannot interpret rights in a more expansive manner than the Strasbourg Court." Let us be blunt: Johnson's government, and the Tories as a whole, explicitly say human rights restricts parliament from doing its job (whatever that means), and by scrapping the Human Rights Act (while framing it as an anti-EU measure), Johnson is making it easier for a future UK government to violate human rights with impunity to stick it to the European Union, and Brexit in hindsight was the Tory government's way of making it easier to restrict or deny its own people's rights.

Downfall

Party's over?

“”[Johnson said that a lot of the Tories think] "the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people – and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them."

—Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Tory government

In January 2022, it was revealed in a report by civil servant Sue Gray that on multiple occasions, Johnson indulged in routine late-night booze-ups in 2020 and 2021, with little connection to workplace activities, thus breaking lockdown rules put in place by his own government due to COVID-19. Johnson, as usual, attempted to wriggle his way out of this scandal — first, by lying and saying that his staff did not hold parties; when that was disproven, he then denied that he knew about the parties in question; when it emerged that he had, in fact, attended some of these parties, Johnson then claimed that he didn't know that these events counted as parties. To some, these parties finally revealed what was well known to those who have followed Johnson's career closely: that rather than being the anti-establishment politician some envisioned, Johnson really was just another member of the powerful hypocritical establishment class, which, when it came to laws and regulations, followed the creed of rules for thee and not for me. To others, Johnson's habitual lying also revealed (again, unsurprisingly for those who have more closely followed Johnson's career) just how incredibly untrustworthy Johnson is.

While under fire for "Partygate", Johnson caused further irritation when he falsely accused Labour Party leader Keir Starmer of shielding notorious child sex abuser Jimmy Savile from prosecution while Starmer was head of the Crown Prosecution Service. This thoroughly-debunked accusation led to an incident where Starmer was set upon by a small mob of protesters who screamed abuse at Starmer for supposedly being a "paedophile protector" and even threw a traffic cone at police officers. Although multiple Tories called for Johnson to apologize for the false statement, Johnson refused.

The combination of the lockdown party row and Johnson's tasteless remarks led to multiple staff member resignations. Although Johnson's approval ratings were underwater well before these incidents, the above events helped send Johnson's approval rating into freefall, with a net approval of between -31% and -51% depending on the poll taken in late January 2022. His approval rating briefly went up following the sanctions he unleashed against Russia after their invasion of Ukraine, but started to go down again around the time the Metropolitan Police issued several fines over Partygate, including at least one to Johnson personally; probably not entirely coincidentally, this was also around the time that the Russians were pushed out of Kyiv and the media started to forget about Ukraine. Oh, and the House of Commons was in recess for the Easter holidays too.

Nothing suspicious about that at all.

Vote of no confidence

In early June 2022, after months of anticipation, the Conservative Party arranged a vote of no confidence against Boris Johnson. If the Tory rebels fail to oust Johnson, they cannot challenge him again until 12 months later per party rules. The June 2022 vote of no confidence has no alternative candidate to Johnson, meaning it is a simple up or down referendum on his leadership. In just prior to the vote of no confidence, Johnson became the first PM to have officially broken the law due to his unwillingness to follow his own government rules on lockdown, a scandal immortalized as "Partygate," which is reportedly the main reason 15% (meaning 54) of all Tory MPs signaled support for a vote of no confidence. But it's not just Partygate if we're being honest. Experts believe many of his own party are reportedly "angered by government parties that broke coronavirus rules, his handling of a deteriorating cost-of-living crisis and a dearth of clear policy goals." But even if you take the Ukraine war, rising inflation, the lingering effects of the pandemic, all out of the equation, Johnson's knock-on effects of Brexit have led to "crippling labor shortages and boosted operating costs for businesses, making the spike in prices even worse." This means even if you don't blame him entirely for how badly the economy had become, his insistence on Brexit (and his refusal to rescind Cameron's austerity policies) basically killed Britain's economy.

While Johnson managed to survive the vote, keeping 59% of a vote, his standing within the party collapsed because his political skills are offset by his personal failings. He has astute political intuition, but he's incredibly reckless (as seen with Partygate). He has a sense of history (see his support for Ukraine over Russia despite Russian oligarchs' deep ties to the Tories), but he does not conduct himself like a leader and more like an escape artist, always sending out feelers to determine what he can do to stay popular. He is great at forcing through his favored policies, but he has no true ideology beyond Brexit, vague populism, bog-standard Tory-style classism and racism. He has uncanny people skills, allowing him to be a soothsayer to the media, and his charisma grants him popularity among Tory voters, but he doesn't treat people like people at all. His "friendships" are not friends but assets based on transactional relationships, which earned him few allies and left him isolated at dangerous moments. As with all other right wing leaders, Johnson's decision to delay lockdown policies made the outbreak worse and likely killed more people than expected or catalogued directly as a result of him being Prime Minister. He often comes across as a man without a plan, and his elitism being put on full display with Partygate killed his popularity, destroyed his always-faked image as a man of the people, and made the party no longer trust his ability to win election.

From 1979 to 2022, of the last five Tory PMs, only David Cameron did not have to contend with a vote of no confidence (because he was humiliated by Brexit instead). Historically speaking, Tory PMs who win their confidence votes eventually leave office anyway, because they become a wounded animal unable to maintain control of their party. Edward Heath lost his confidence vote in February 1975 after losing two general elections the previous year to Harold Wilson. He came in second on the first ballot to Margaret Thatcher, who herself won her own confidence vote in November 1990, but was "convinced" to step aside anyway. John Major, who succeeded Thatcher, triggered a June 1995 leadership contest against himself to face off the Euroskeptics in his party, and though he won, he would lose the 1997 election to Tony Blair. Theresa May faced a vote of no confidence in December 2018 after three straight failed Brexit deals, and while she won the confidence vote, she resigned on May 2019 anyway, paving the way for Boris Johnson... who won with less votes than May on the confidence vote.

The end

All the chaos finally became too much for the Prime Minister to ignore. After Johnson appointed a man credibly accused of sexual assault to the position of Deputy Chief Whip (meant to enforce party discipline and make sure party members vote the party line), Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak immediately resigned in protest, triggering a flurry of resignations (42+) throughout the government, including other cabinet ministers. There was no saving Boris after that. He vowed to remain, which led to reports that the 1922 Committee was looking into changing its own rules to allow a second no confidence vote. But in truth it only delayed the inevitable by about a day or two.

On the 7^th of July, 2022, Johnson announced his decision to resign from his duties, specifically as Conservative Leader, and he will remain until a new Tory leader is elected. On September 6, Liz Truss became the new PM. Although it was rumoured that he would make a return when his successor inevitably buggered everything up, when Truss eventually quit after her economic policies devalued the British pound, Johnson dropped out of the race and allowed Sunak to become Prime Minister.

In 2023, after receiving a letter from the Commons Privileges Committee suggesting that the inquiry into Partygate had found against him, Johnson preemptively resigned his seat in Parliament and declared the end of his political career, thank god. He subsequently joined the writing staff of the infamously pro-Johnson Daily Mail. Johnson being Johnson, he did so in a manner that violated Parliamentary rules.

Post-PM tabloid scribblings

In his new job as a Daily Mail scribbler, Johnson continued to support Trump for a second (or third) term as president in 2024, believing that Trump's chaos and fascist tendencies were best for the world, believing that Trump, after 'thinking', would support Ukraine over Russia. He wrote:

“”I simply cannot believe that Trump will ditch the ­Ukrainians; on the contrary, having worked out, as he surely has, that there is no deal to be done with Putin, I reckon there is a good chance that he will double down and finish what he started — by giving them what they need to win.

Well, Trump already threw Ukraine under the bus once under a veil of corruption in 2019. Trump would undoubtedly do it again for the highest bidder.

Few good achievements

See the main article on this topic: Stopped clock

• While his record on homosexuality is mostly pretty poor, he voted in favour of allowing gay couples to seek civil marriages and supported repealing Section 28. He also banned Core Issues Trust from displaying its homophobic adverts on buses in London.
• He did a fairly good job as Mayor of London, largely keeping the ever-rising crime rate under control and increasing the amount of affordable housing built in the city.
• As Foreign Secretary, he played a role in the extradition of Hashem Abedi, who was convicted of conspiring with his brother Salman in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing (although he did have to offer the Libyan government a £9.2 million care package to get the ball rolling).
• His government achieved the highest COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Europe at the beginning of 2021 (although, true to form, Boris continued to cling onto this long after it stopped being true) and the UK remained in the top 15 European countries by terms of vaccine rollouts, as well as achieving the third-highest rollout of booster shots in the world. Johnson also put his faith in the AstraZeneca vaccine at a time when many were scaremongering about it potentially being dangerous, claims which turned out to be unfounded.
• His reputation in Ukraine is pretty good due to the hefty sanctions he and the US imposed against Russia and the military assistance he provided to the Ukrainian government. — a major turnaround from the Conservative Party's 'addiction' to Russian money. However, his Ukraine record isn't spotless, as he used visits to Ukraine and other countries as an excuse to ignore a mounting cost-of-living crisis at home.
• In the aftermath of both the final and leaked decisions of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 United States Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade, Johnson condemned the decision and was emphatically supportive of the right to choose, putting him out of step with much of his party — although prior to that point his record on abortion rights was essentially nonexistent.

Boris miscellanea

Musicians: can you see what's wrong in this picture?

"Your mileage may vary" when it comes to Boris Johnson. People view him as either an absolute legend or a complete arse biscuit. Often, the reasons for either conclusion are the same:

• That hair! He's mesmerizing. His hair, that is, his mouth not so much.
• "Yes, cannabis is dangerous, but no more than other perfectly legal drugs. It's time for a rethink, and the Tory party — the funkiest, most jiving party on Earth - is where it's happening."
• Having his election strategist Lynton Crosby ban him from answering difficult questions.
• Confusing rugby and football. Though he did take down a German in the process. That game was also notable for him meeting actual Liverpudlian football manager Peter Reid who immediately started calling him a "fucking disgrace".
• Hosting an episode of Have I Got News For You, and agreeing that the Tory Party will remain "stumbling on" as they have been for the previous 200 years.
• Having a fantastic "plummy" Old Etonian accent.
• Tory Sex God, famous for his string of affairs.
• Being better than the police and "oiks" and joyfully discussing the beating up of a tabloid journalist.
• Publicly mocking Mitt Romney after he suggested the 2012 Summer Olympics would fail. He also endorsed Barack Obama in 2008, but nine years later called him a mongrel for opposing Brexit. Careful, Boris, CCHQ has spent a lot of time and money cultivating your loveable oaf persona.
• Being a natural-born U.S. citizen (born in New York City, therefore had dual-citizenship), which means that for a time he could have theoretically, run for President of the United States. This also means New York City unleashed two cartoonish nutcases with terrible hair onto humanity as world leaders.
• Suggesting Iran should have nuclear weapons in 2006 to make the regime more pliable
• Writing a book which describes the media as run by a Jewish cabal and caricatures various ethnic minorities (despite that he himself ironically has jewish ancestry).
• Personally saved a woman from three girls threatening her with an iron bar during his Mayor of London stint.

Other Johnsons

• Boris' younger brother Jo Johnson, a former Conservative MP to whom he gave a peerage, is characterised as being like Boris but with no sense of humour whatsoever (and agrees with said characterisation). Jo has basically said that what Boris is doing is not in the "national interest"; hence why he stood down. Because Boris would expect him to support him, but Jo cannot do so because it’s not in the national interest. Let that sink in.
• His father, Stanley, is worth a look.
• His sister Rachel Johnson stood as a candidate for strongly pro-EU rival party Change UK in 2019.

The whole family also seem to be opposed to Brexit, which must have made for some awkward dinner table conversations recently. Especially around the fridge.

See also

• Marmite - Like Boris, you either love it or hate it.
• Donald Trump

External links

• The absolute madmen.
• Well of course you need to have "Ride of the Valkyries" on at full belt when hosing down protesters.

Videos

• Boris gets called a "cunt" on live TV — But he lacks the depth and warmth.

References

British Prime Ministers

Chamberlain (Con.) - Churchill (Con.) - Attlee (Lab.) - Churchill (Con.) - Eden (Con.) - Macmillan (Con.) - Douglas-Home (Con.) - Wilson (Lab.) - Heath (Con.) - Wilson (Lab.) - Callaghan (Lab.) - Thatcher (Con.) - Major (Con.) - Blair (Lab.) - Brown (Lab.) - Cameron (Con.) - May (Con.) - Johnson (Con.) - Truss (Con.) - Sunak (Con.) - Starmer (Lab.) (incumbent)