As prime minister, Johnson faces Brexit he championed
LONDON — Boris Johnson, Britain’s brash former foreign secretary and standard-bearer for leaving the European Union, on Tuesday won the contest to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May, with his party handing the job of resolving the country’s three-year Brexit nightmare to one of its most polarizing politicians.
Johnson beat Jeremy Hunt, his successor as foreign secretary, in the battle for the leadership of Britain’s governing Conservative Party, winning a substantial 66 percent of the postal vote held among its membership. Although the Conservatives’ working majority in Parliament is very small, it appears to be enough to ensure that Johnson will succeed May as prime minister Wednesday.
He would take office at one of the most critical moments in Britain’s recent history, immediately facing the toughest challenge of his career, to manage his nation’s exit from the European Union in little more than three months. But his policy swerves, lack of attention to detail and contradictory statements leave the country guessing how things will unfold.
“I know that there will be people around the place who will question the wisdom of your decision, and there may even be some people here who still wonder quite what they have done,” Johnson told the party meeting in London on Tuesday at which the vote results were announced.
While he has a mandate from his party’s dues-paying members, the hard facts that brought down May have not changed: deep divisions on Brexit among Conservatives in Parliament, implacable opposition from other parties, and the insistence of European officials that they will make no major concessions.
Johnson has doubled down lately on Brexit, promising to take Britain out of the European Union by the Oct. 31 deadline “do or die,” if necessary risking the economic dislocation of leaving without any agreement, rather than seek an extension.
“We’re going to get Brexit done on Oct. 31, we’re going to take advantage of all the opportunities that it will bring in a new spirit of can-do, and we’re once again going to believe in ourselves,” he promised Tuesday. “Like some slumbering giant, we’re going to rise and ping off the guy-ropes of doubt and negativity.”
May and Johnson will visit Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday for her assent to the transition. The short journey from Parliament to the palace will be the culmination of a colorful career for Johnson, a former journalist whose ambition as a child was to become “world king,” who wrote a biography of his hero Winston Churchill, and who has been praised by President Donald Trump.
Trump tweeted congratulations to Johnson on Tuesday, adding, “He will be great!”
Johnson’s rare mix of charismatic bluster and absent-minded air — either charming or maddening, depending on the listener and the moment — and his unusual gift for communicating with voters have made him one of the country’s best-known politicians for years, and carried him to two terms as London mayor.