The political magician who won power and lost control.

His time in Number 10 was one of the most tumultuous of any prime minister. His rise to power demonstrated his mastery of the art of winning and surviving scandals against the odds. But as the crises grew, his luck finally ran out.


After his landslide general election victory in 2019, Boris Johnson looked unassailable as prime minister.

His majority of 80 marked the end of the parliamentary logjam over Brexit, the Labour Party had collapsed into bouts of infighting and critics within his own party were silenced.


The Conservatives had elected him leader months earlier, not because he had demonstrated a particular aptitude for government in his previous roles, but because they thought he could win where others could not - and he delivered in emphatic style.


He had wooed voters in parts of the country his party had never dreamt possible to win. The idea Mr Johnson could spend a decade or more in Downing Street was a real prospect.

But two and a half years on, it is all over.

A man whose career was defined by surviving scandal against the odds was brought down ingloriously.

When the moment came, his fall from power was as full of drama and controversy as his ascent.



*World king

Born in New York in 1964, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson spent the first years of his life moving between countries with his family, as his father Stanley pursued a varied international career. At the age of eight, it is said he declared his ambition was to become "world king".

Schooled at Eton, he went on to Oxford University in 1983 to study Classics at Balliol College. He became president of the Oxford Union debating society, as well as a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club.
While in Oxford he met his first wife, Allegra Mostyn-Owen.After graduating he began his career in journalism, joining The Times as a trainee before being sacked for making up a quote in a story.

At 25 he became The Daily Telegraph's Brussels correspondent, making his name as a writer with articles questioning and ridiculing laws and directives from the European Commission. There were tales of undersized condoms running afoul of European rules, wonky bananas and bans on prawn cocktail crisps.

Readers of the eurosceptic Telegraph lapped it up at a time when the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Sir John Major were grappling with the thorny issue of Europe. His articles may have stretched the truth, but they have since been credited with revitalising the cause of euroscepticism.

Brussels contemporaries say this period also saw the "Boris act" in full flow. Everything - including his clothes, car and flat - were a mess. But this persona disarmed his rivals, leaving them with their guards down.
"Boris was very clever at creating an image and downplaying expectations so that colleagues thought he was way off-beam, and didn't know what he was doing," The Times journalist Michael Binyon told Mr Johnson's biographer Sonia Purnell.
"He put rivals off the scent and then would then come up with a cracker of a story."
During his time in Brussels he married his second wife, Marina Wheeler.


*Finding fame

When he returned to London five years later, Mr Johnson became a regular Telegraph columnist and began writing for The Spectator.

He made a litany of offensive remarks in these columns that would attract scrutiny as he embarked on a political career.

Mr Johnson referred to "tank-topped bumboys" in one article, described citizens of the Commonwealth as "flag-waving piccaninnies" with "watermelon smiles", and described working-class men as likely to be "drunk, criminal, aimless, feckless and hopeless".

It was around this time that the future PM started appearing on the BBC's quiz show Have I Got News For You.

The appearances introduced him to a wider audience and is considered the beginning of the "Boris" persona in the minds of the wider public.

In 1999 he assumed the editorship of The Spectator, a role that was given to him by proprietor Conrad Black on the condition that he gave up efforts to enter Parliament.

But two years later he was elected MP for the safe Conservative seat of Henley in Oxfordshire.


*Entering the political fray

Despite his designs on higher office, Mr Johnson's early time in the Commons left him frustrated and disillusioned.

Labour prime minister Tony Blair had just recorded the second of his three election victories and his political fortunes had yet to be dented by the Iraq War.

The Conservatives were in the electoral wilderness and going through another leadership contest after the resignation of William Hague.

Mr Johnson craved power, but his party looked like it would be out of office for years to come.

He was made shadow arts minister in 2004 by Michael Howard, the leader at the time, his first frontbench role.

But not long afterwards, Mr Johnson was forced to go to Liverpool and apologise for an editorial in The Spectator that claimed the people of the city "wallow" in their "victim status" and incorrectly blamed "drunken fans" for the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.

He did not last long in the shadow cabinet. He was sacked before the year was out for lying about an affair with Petronella Wyatt, a columnist for The Spectator.

In 2005 Mr Johnson resigned as editor of The Spectator after being offered a return to the shadow front bench as higher education spokesman by the new Conservative leader, David Cameron.

He continued his work as a columnist for The Daily Telegraph.


*London calling

By 2007 Mr Johnson had set his sights on the capital, announcing he would run for the role of London mayor.

After winning the race to be the Tory candidate to take on Ken Livingstone in 2008, he triumphed in the mayoral contest with 53% of the vote.

The result showcased Mr Johnson's broad electoral appeal and caused many Conservatives to wonder: If he could beat Labour in London, what could he do across the rest of the country?

Throughout his time in City Hall, Mr Johnson was viewed as a "king over the water" and was a constant source of media fascination.

His first term saw the departures of several senior figures in his administration, while he was criticised for his response to the 2011 riots in the capital.

But he won re-election in 2012, further burnishing his reputation as a potential future occupant of Number 10.

The summer Olympics in the capital that year provided more publicity for Mr Johnson, which included getting stuck on a zip wire whilst waving a pair of Union Jacks.

With his attention turning back to Westminster, Mr Johnson opted not to seek a third term in 2016.

He left City Hall with his reputation intact - a YouGov poll at the end of his second term found more than half of voters thought Mr Johnson had done a good job.

To his legion of critics, Mr Johnson remained all style and no substance. A court jester who should be allowed nowhere near high office.

But that was exactly where the ambitious Mr Johnson was setting his sights.


*Take back control

His return to the Commons as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2015 election sparked speculation he was coming for David Cameron's job.
Mr Cameron won the first outright Tory majority since 1992 in that year's election, but he was about to embark on a gamble that saw him out of office little more than a year later. Europe had been a headache for successive Conservative prime ministers.

Mr Cameron, who came to power in 2010, initially attempted to avoid getting bogged down in the issue.
But as the eurozone crisis raged, member states pushed for further integration and immigration increased, he came to the view that offering a public vote on Britain's membership of the EU was necessary.

It was a decision his allies have since argued was unavoidable, given the growing strength of UKIP under Nigel Farage, who had eurosceptics in the Conservative Party terrified.

His approach was to attempt a renegotiation of Britain's relationship with Brussels and then hold a referendum.NHe got his new deal in 2016 and the vote was set for 23 June that year.
One of the key questions was which side Mr Johnson would come out in favour of.
A declaration for Remain would almost certainly guarantee victory for the Stronger In campaign.

If he came out in favour of Vote Leave, however, all bets were off. Mr Johnson opted for the latter - a decision he is said to have agonised over extensively.
But plenty of aspersions were cast on the motivation of his final decision.
Many, including Mr Cameron himself, maintain to this day that Mr Johnson chose Brexit to help his career.

His critics point to the fact that he wrote two versions of his Daily Telegraph column explaining his decision: one in favour of remaining in the EU and another backing Vote Leave. Flanked by Michael Gove, Mr Johnson played a starring role in the ensuing campaign, urging people to vote for Brexit and "take back control".

At the start, the received wisdom was that Remain would win, but Vote Leave's message struck a chord.
A total of 52% of voters backed Brexit and a crestfallen Mr Cameron resigned.
As the spearhead of the successful campaign, Mr Johnson stood on the precipice of power.

*It cannot be me'

Among the list of contenders for the Tory crown, Mr Johnson was the clear frontrunner.Other candidates may have held cabinet positions - like Home Secretary Theresa May, or the former defence Secretary Liam Fox - but the fight to be David Cameron's successor was seen as his to lose. Hours before the formal nominations closed on 30 June 2016, Mr Johnson's campaign arranged a news conference.

Journalists and his MP supporters gathered in a London hotel reception room, anticipating a speech about how he intended to shape the UK's post-Brexit future. Nobody expected to hear what came next.

Read more: https://news sky com/story/the-rise-and-fall-of-boris-johnson-the-political-magician-who-won-power-but-lost-control-12519849


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