Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson had a conventional rise to power. <\/p>\n
Boris Johnson was once likened by a member of his party to a \"greased piglet\" for his ability to bounce back from a succession of setbacks and scandals that would have sunk other less popular politicians. <\/p>\n
However, his luck has continued to fade as Covid-era party scandals forced him to quit as a member of parliament less than a year after they helped push him out of office as prime minister. <\/p>\n
The 58-year-old populist angrily quit as MP in the midst of an investigation into whether he repeatedly lied to parliament over lockdown-breaking parties when he was in office, which he slammed as a \"kangaroo court.\" <\/p>\n
His resignation pre-empted a finding which could force a humiliating fight to retain his MP seat, which he held by a slim majority. <\/p>\n
\"It is very sad to be leaving Parliament -- at least for now -- but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically... with such egregious bias,\" he said. <\/p>\n
Johnson led the Tories to a thumping 80-seat majority in the December 2019 general election on a promise to \"get Brexit done\". <\/p>\n
That allowed him to railroad through parliament his divorce deal with the European Union, unblocking years of political paralysis. <\/p>\n
But he was undone by his handling of the Covid pandemic, \"Partygate\" and a succession of other scandals that led to a ministerial rebellion in July last year. <\/p>\n
Even though he quit as prime minister, rumours have persisted that Johnson -- a thrice-married father of at least eight children -- had not given up hope of another shot at the top job. <\/p>\n
'Cavalier' <\/p>\n
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson had a conventional rise to power for a Conservative politician: first the elite Eton College, then Oxford University. <\/p>\n
At Eton, his teachers bemoaned his \"cavalier attitude\" to his studies and the sense he gave that he should be treated as \"an exception\". <\/p>\n
Johnson's apparent attitude that rules were for other people was amply demonstrated in 2006 when he inexplicably rugby tackled a football opponent in a charity game. <\/p>\n
His elastic relationship with the truth was forged at Oxford, where he was president of the Oxford Union, a debating society founded on rhetoric and repartee rather than mastery of cold, hard facts. <\/p>\n
His privileged cohort in the backstabbing den of student politics provided many leading Brexiteers. <\/p>\n
Soon after Oxford, he married his first wife -- fellow student Allegra Mostyn-Owen -- despite her mother's misgivings. <\/p>\n
\"I didn't like the fact he was on the right,\" Gaia Servadio, who died in 2021, was quoted as saying by Johnson's biographer Tom Bower. <\/p>\n
\"But above all, I didn't like his character. For him, the truth doesn't exist.\" <\/p>\n
After university, he was sacked from The Times newspaper after making up a quote, then joined The Telegraph as its Brussels correspondent. <\/p>\n
From there, he fed the growing Conservative Euroscepticism of the 1990s with regular \"euromyths\" about supposed EU plans for a federal mega-state threatening British sovereignty. <\/p>\n
Exasperated rivals charged with matching his questionable exclusives described some of his tales as \"complete bollocks\". <\/p>\n
Opportunism <\/p>\n
Johnson capitalised on his increasingly high profile with satirical television quiz show appearances and newspaper and magazine columns. <\/p>\n
Much of his journalism has since been requoted at length, particularly his unreconstructed views on issues from single mothers and homosexuality to British colonialism. <\/p>\n
He became an MP in 2004, with the Tory leader at the time, Michael Howard, sacking him from his shadow cabinet for lying about an extra-marital affair. <\/p>\n
From 2008 to 2016 he served two terms as mayor of London, promoting himself as a pro-EU liberal, a stance which he abandoned as soon as the Brexit referendum came about. <\/p>\n
He became \"leave\" campaign's figurehead, capitalising on his popular image as an unconventional but likeable rogue as the quickest route to power. <\/p>\n
His former editor at The Telegraph, Max Hastings, described it as cynical -- but not unexpected. Johnson, he said, \"cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification\". <\/p>\n
Hastings wrote in The Times ahead of Johnson's resignation as prime minister that he had \"broken every rule of decency, and made no attempt to pursue a coherent policy agenda beyond Brexit\". <\/p>\n
But he was \"the same moral bankrupt as when the Conservative party chose him, as shambolic in his conduct of office as in his management of his life\". <\/p>\n
After he quit as MP, the Labour party's deputy leader Angela Rayner said the public -- battling a cost-of-living crisis -- have had enough of the \"never-ending Tory soap opera\". <\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) <\/p>\n
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Brexit To 'Partygate': The Rise And Fall Of Boris Johnson - NDTV<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson had a conventional rise to power. Continue reading