Boris Johnson forced out as Prime Minister of the U.K. after predictably disastrous tenure

The Boris John­son error in British pol­i­tics is one step clos­er to being over.

John­son, a for­mer tabloid writer and Brex­it band­wag­oner who con­vinced the Tories (and many vot­ers) to entrust him with the respon­si­bil­i­ty of gov­ern­ing the Unit­ed King­dom after the col­lapse of David Cameron’s and There­sa May’s gov­ern­ments, was forced to sub­mit his res­ig­na­tion to Her Majesty the Queen today after most of his remain­ing enablers uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly aban­doned him.

Waves of res­ig­na­tions and a crum­bling Cab­i­net have pum­meled John­son’s polit­i­cal oper­a­tion for days, leav­ing him in an increas­ing­ly per­ilous position.

“It is now clear­ly the will of the par­lia­men­tary con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty that there should be a new leader of that par­ty and there­fore a new Prime Min­is­ter,” John­son said in a state­ment deliv­ered in front of Num­ber 10 Down­ing Street.

“I want you to know how sad I am to give up the best job in the world,” John­son added lat­er, “but them’s the breaks.”

Hard­ly! John­son is no vic­tim of mis­for­tune as his state­ment implies. His prob­lems are of his own mak­ing. He was not lead­er­ship mate­r­i­al when he became May­or of Lon­don many years ago, or when he was elect­ed to Par­lia­ment, or when There­sa May fool­ish­ly made him For­eign Min­is­ter, or when the Tories put him in as May’s suc­ces­sor. Yet, again and again, he has been cho­sen to wield power.

“As the UK media dumps all over Boris John­son, worth not­ing he’d nev­er have become Prime Min­is­ter had the media not cov­ered for him, enabled him, & bathed him in praise. Easy now for every­one to for­get the fawn­ing cov­er­age he got but some of us have longer mem­o­ries & knew he’d be a dis­as­ter,” tweet­ed MSNBC’s Meh­di Hasan, not­ing John­son’s many (for­mer) admir­ers in the press.

“John­son’s res­ig­na­tion was char­ac­ter­is­tic of his entire move­ment: the swag­ger­ing con­fi­dence of a vir­tu­ouso ding­bat,” said Russ Jones. “A bunch of irre­spon­si­ble, over-pro­mot­ed pre­fects, play­ing with our lives until they’ve made enough rich con­nec­tions to cash-in, leav­ing oth­ers to clear up the mess.”

Led by Don­keys, mean­while, post­ed a scathing video cap­tioned “A reminder of just who he is” point­ing out that John­son’s pro­cliv­i­ty for lying and fab­ri­cat­ing was well known before he became Prime Minister.

“Ordi­nar­i­ly, a rep­u­ta­tion for ser­i­al deceit would close off the route to the top, or at least prove an imped­i­ment. Yet for John­son it proved no obsta­cle at all. On the con­trary, his route to No 10 was smoothed with lies,” observed Jonathan Freed­land in a col­umn for The Guardian.

John­son final­ly told one lie too many, The Inde­pen­den­t’s Sean O’Grady sug­gest­ed, warn­ing that John­son’s suc­ces­sor might be even worse than he was.

Refer­ring to John­son’s Tory enablers, he wrote:

“They backed John­son through the Dominic Cum­mings scan­dal, through the res­ig­na­tions of two ethics advis­ers, through the scan­dal of a par­ty donor pay­ing for the dec­o­ra­tion of his flat, through the mis­han­dling of the pan­dem­ic and the mis­man­ag­ing of Brex­it with a rot­ten deal, Par­ty­gate and law break­ing, an unlaw­ful pro­ro­ga­tion of par­lia­ment and break­ing treaties and inter­na­tion­al law, alleged­ly try­ing to get Car­rie a £100,000 job and Wil­fred a £150,000 tree­house, depriv­ing kids of free school din­ners… and much, much more.”

“They are all guilty men and women because they vot­ed for him, cam­paigned for him, sus­tained him, lied for him and gen­er­al­ly dis­graced them­selves and the coun­try in the process,” O’Grady added in a sub­se­quent pas­sage. “They were all mem­bers of the cult of Boris, and they knew exact­ly what he was.”

Although John­son has bowed to the calls for his res­ig­na­tion, he is hop­ing to hang around for weeks and months longer. His announce­ment today was appar­ent­ly intend­ed to buy him more time. That’s unac­cept­able, the oppo­si­tion says.

“Boris John­son is unfit to gov­ern and he needs to go now,” said Labour’s Keir Starmer, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Oppo­si­tion.

“He can­not cling on for months. If the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty do not get rid of him, then Labour will act in the nation­al inter­est and bring a vote of no confidence.”

Starmer called it “good news for the coun­try” that John­son was on his way out, but said Britain would con­tin­ue to suf­fer under Tory rule.

“The Tory Par­ty have inflict­ed chaos upon the coun­try dur­ing the worst cost of liv­ing cri­sis in decades and they can­not now pre­tend they are the ones to sort it out. They have been in pow­er for twelve years. The dam­age they have done is pro­found. Twelve years of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion. Twelve years of declin­ing pub­lic ser­vices, twelve years of emp­ty promis­es. Enough is enough… We need a prop­er change of gov­ern­ment. We need a fresh start for Britain.”

In the Euro­pean Union, there were plen­ty of peo­ple say­ing good rid­dance and don’t let the door hit you on the way out, at least among the diplo­mat­ic corps.

“I think every­body has … had the same sort of strange Schaden­freude feel­ing about it. It’s been very enter­tain­ing,” a Euro­pean Union diplo­mat said in com­ments to Politi­co. “We’re hap­py to see him gone … It is dif­fi­cult to see how things could be worse than they were under Boris Johnson.”

The White House had lit­tle to say about the day’s devel­op­ments oth­er than to acknowl­edge them. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has found com­mon cause with John­son on defend­ing Ukraine, but on oth­er issues, like the so-called pro­to­col or Brex­it, John­son’s gov­ern­ment has tak­en stances not to the lik­ing of the administration.

Whether or not John­son’s bid to buy him­self more time in office will pay off or end in fur­ther embar­rass­ment remains to be seen, but there cer­tain­ly are plen­ty of peo­ple angry that he’s try­ing to hold onto pow­er even longer.