![]() ![]() Lockdown parties at 10 Downing Street earned Johnson the distinct dishonor of becoming the country’s first sitting Prime Minister ever to be fined for breaking the law. But his term-general elections are due in late 2024 or early 2025-would not have been cut short were it not for a series of self-inflicted scandals, most notably his failure to adhere to his own government’s pandemic restrictions. Johnson has said he wanted to carry on serving into the 2030s. If Johnson’s political descent seems more extreme than that of his predecessors, it’s because “he had further to fall,” says Anand Menon, director of the London-based think tank U.K. But as the country reflects on the past three years of Johnson’s leadership, another narrative emerges-one defined by the repeated undermining of the norms and values underpinning Britain’s political culture, perhaps beyond repair. If it were up to Johnson, perhaps the extent of his legacy would be: a short-lived, but nonetheless consequential, Prime Minister who transformed Britain’s place in the world all the while leading the country through the COVID-19 pandemic and a war in Europe. And, after several years of stalled negotiations and parliamentary wrangling over what the country’s exit from the bloc should look like, he entered Downing Street in 2019 on the back of a pledge to “get Brexit done.” Johnson’s landslide election victory that same year gave his Conservative Party a mandate to govern with its largest parliamentary majority in more than 30 years. The 58-year-old journalist-turned-politician rose to international prominence as one of the leading campaigners for Britain to leave the E.U. ![]() That’s perhaps because, for a long while, it seemed as though there was nothing that could bring Johnson down. Although Johnson is hardly the first British leader to go from serving in the country’s highest political office to the backbenches of parliament-where lawmakers who don’t hold cabinet positions sit-his fall from power seems particularly tragic by comparison. ![]()
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