Brexit backer Boris to lead Britain
Johnson poised to be PM as EU crisis rages on
LONDON — Boris Johnson aspires to be a modernday Winston Churchill. Critics fear he’s a British Donald Trump.
Johnson won the contest to lead the governing Conservative Party on Tuesday, and is set to become Britain’s prime minister.
Like revered World War II leader Churchill, Johnson aims to turn a national crisis — in this case Brexit — into a triumph. Like Trump, he gained his country’s top political office by deploying celebrity, clowning, provocation and a loose relationship with the truth.
“He’s a different kind of a guy, but they say I’m a different kind of a guy, too,” Trump said approvingly last week. “We get along well.”
Maintaining strong relations with the volatile Trump will be one of the new leader’s major challenges. So will negotiating Britain’s stalled exit from the European Union, the conundrum that brought down predecessor Theresa May.
The 55-year-old Johnson may be one of Britain’s most famous politicians, but in many ways he is a mystery.
Johnson is now a strong believer of Brexit, but he famously agonized over the decision, writing two newspaper columns — one in favor of quitting the EU, one against — before throwing himself behind the “leave” campaign in Britain’s 2016 referendum over whether it should remain in the bloc.
Johnson says he will lead Britain out of the EU on the scheduled date of Oct. 31, with or without a divorce deal. He says Britain should prepare intensely for leaving without an agreement, but insists the chances of it happening are “a million-to-one against.”
Historian Max Hastings, Johnson’s former boss at the Daily Telegraph newspaper, has called him “a man of remarkable gifts, flawed by an absence of conscience, principle or scruple.”
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in New York in 1964, the eldest child of a close-knit, extroverted and fiercely competitive upper middle-class British family.
After attending Oxford University, Johnson became a journalist. He survived being fired from The Times newspaper for making up a quote to become Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.
Later came a stint as editor of conservative-leaning news-magazine The Spectator, frequent television appearances and, simultaneously, election as a member of Parliament.
In 2008, he was elected mayor of London. In 2016, his energy, and popularity played a key role in the EU referendum campaign. After the country’s surprise vote to leave toppled Prime Minister David Cameron, Johnson looked set to succeed him. But he dropped out of the race after a key ally, Michael Gove, decided to run against him.
May won the contest and made Johnson foreign secretary. His two years in the job were studded with missteps.
In July 2018, Johnson quit the government over his opposition to May’s Brexit blueprint, and became Britain’s Brexiteer-in-chief, arguing that leaving the EU would be easy if the country just showed more “can-do spirit.”