Boris Johnson Born: Brexit Champion Turned Controversial PM

Boris Johnson leveraged a career in journalism and London's mayoralty into becoming prime minister, where he delivered Brexit and won an 80-seat parliamentary majority before his tenure collapsed amid scandal. Born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson on June 19, 1964, in New York City, he held American citizenship until 2016. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was president of the Oxford Union. He began his career as a journalist at The Times, was fired for fabricating a quote, and then joined The Daily Telegraph as Brussels correspondent, where his irreverent dispatches about European Union regulations helped shape British Euroskepticism. He became editor of The Spectator and then Member of Parliament for Henley-on-Thames. He served two terms as Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016, presiding over the 2012 Olympics and cultivating a public image as a rumpled, quotable, fundamentally harmless figure. That image was carefully constructed. He was the most prominent campaigner for Leave during the 2016 Brexit referendum, and when the vote went his way, he briefly withdrew from the leadership contest before reemerging. He became prime minister in July 2019, negotiated a Brexit withdrawal agreement, and called a snap election in December 2019 that produced the Conservatives' largest majority since Margaret Thatcher. His government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was initially praised for the vaccine rollout but became toxic when evidence emerged that Downing Street staff had held parties during lockdown periods when the rest of the country was legally prohibited from gathering. The "Partygate" scandal, combined with a series of other controversies, led to mass cabinet resignations in July 2022, forcing Johnson to announce his resignation.