LONDON — The top, when it lastly got here, was simply as messy and jaw-dropping as each different chapter of Boris Johnson’s political profession.
Holed up in Downing Avenue on Wednesday night time, the prime minister confronted a riot of his cupboard, a catastrophic lack of assist in his Conservative Occasion and a wholesale exodus of ministers, which threatened to depart important components of the British authorities with out functioning management.
But removed from surrendering, Mr. Johnson’s aides put out phrase that he would proceed to combat. It seemed like a final roll of the cube by one of many nice gamblers in British politics. His brazen refusal to acknowledge actuality invited comparisons to Donald J. Trump’s defiance within the chaotic days after the 2020 presidential election.
By Thursday morning, nevertheless, political gravity lastly reasserted itself. For one of many few occasions in his profession, Mr. Johnson was unable to bend the narrative to his benefit by means of the sheer pressure of his character; at noon, in entrance of his Downing Avenue headquarters, he introduced he was relinquishing the management of a celebration that not supported him, and giving up a job he had pursued for a lot of his grownup life.
“I wish to inform you how sorry I’m to be giving up the most effective job on the planet,” Mr. Johnson stated, “however them’s the breaks.”
Because the political post-mortems on Mr. Johnson are written, the tumultuous occasions of the final week might come to encapsulate his profession — one outlined by a gleeful disregard for the principles, a shrewd intuition for public opinion, an elastic method to ethics and a Falstaffian urge for food for the cut-and-thrust of politics.
“Most prime ministers would have gotten the message sooner,” stated Andrew Gimson, certainly one of Mr. Johnson’s biographers. “The component of exaggeration, of turning up the quantity, may be very attribute of his type.”
Mr. Gimson as soon as likened Mr. Johnson to Admiral Nelson, the 18th-century naval hero who vanquished Napoleon within the Battle of Trafalgar.
“Nelson stated the boldest measures are the most secure,” he stated. “Boris additionally thinks the boldest measures are the most secure.”
Ultimately, nevertheless, Mr. Johnson’s risk-taking urge for food was not sufficient to compensate for his panoply of shortcomings. He engaged in habits that critics stated revealed a way of entitlement and a perception that the principles didn’t apply to him. Critics accused him of being disorganized, ideologically and administratively.
After main Britain out of the European Union in 2020, the prime minister didn’t have a lot of a plan for what to do subsequent. He rapidly turned hostage to occasions, lurching from disaster to disaster because the coronavirus pandemic engulfed Britain, and presiding over a scandal-soaked administration.
Mr. Johnson had lengthy thrived by thumbing his nostril at political conference. His messy crop of blonde hair appeared a metaphor for a messy private {and professional} life, which some British voters savored whereas others merely tolerated it.
However Mr. Johnson’s lack of truthfulness lastly caught up with him. His continuously shifting accounts of his conduct — whether or not in attending illicit events at Downing Avenue throughout lockdowns, trying to make use of a Tory Occasion donor to finance the pricey refurbishment of his condo, or selling a Conservative lawmaker with a historical past of sexual misconduct allegations towards him — lastly exhausted the assist of his celebration and many citizens.
Mr. Johnson’s position in campaigning to depart the European Union, then finishing up Brexit and seeing Britain by means of the pandemic, will assure him a spot within the ranks of serious British prime ministers. However he could also be most remembered for his confounding mixture of strengths and weaknesses.
For a lot of the final decade, Mr. Johnson’s dynamic, flamable character riveted the British individuals and dominated the nation’s politics. On Thursday, nevertheless, he burned out in as spectacular a vogue as he first arrived.
