HEIR APPARENT
was recorded saying that a violence-torn Libyan city could become a tourism hub once authorities “clear the dead bodies away”.
He inadvertently worsened the plight of a British-Iranian woman detained in Tehran by repeating an Iranian allegation that she was a journalist. “It has been a misfortune for Britain that through two years when diplomacy has been critically important we have been represented abroad by a jester,” historian Max Hastings wrote in The Times.
He called Mr Johnson “a man of remarkable gifts, flawed by an absence of conscience, principle or scruple”.
The New York Times ran an editorial about the resignation under the headline “Good Riddance, Boris Johnson”.
Mr Johnson is one of Britain’s best-known politicians, famous for his tousled blond hair, and florid speeches studded with Latin phrases. But his rumpled, eccentric exterior covers a core of steely ambition. He has made no secret of his ambition to be prime minister, though when David Cameron’s resignation after the 2016 EU membership referendum sparked a leadership contest, Mr Johnson was abandoned by a key ally and outmanoeuvred by Ms May, who became Prime Minister.
Now critics and allies are waiting to see whether Mr Johnson will challenge Ms May for the top job.
Guto Harri, Mr Johnson’s former communications chief, said Mr Johnson’s popular image as a politician of character and integrity had been destroyed by Brexit. Many believe his support for an EU exit was motivated more by a desire to make himself leader of the rebellious “leave” movement than by true belief.
He has been indelibly linked to the campaign’s exaggerated claim, emblazoned on the side of a bus, that Britain paid £350 million a week to the EU. The true amount is about half that.
Mr Harri said Mr Johnson’s support for Brexit “was a bad miscalculation.” “Nobody genuinely believes that he was sincere about Brexit,” Mr Harri said.
Victoria Honeyman, a lecturer in politics at the University of Leeds, said Mr Johnson still wanted to topple Ms May — but not now, when the complex and compromiseladen work of negotiating Brexit drags on.
Once Britain leaves the bloc in March, “I don’t doubt that we will see Boris Johnson launching a leadership campaign. Because at that point it becomes a much more attractive job, once someone else has done the dirty work.
“What he wants is to take over once it’s done and then blame his predecessor for it not being what he thought that it would be,” Dr Honeyman said.
AP