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Boris Johnson’s political career, an unpredictable downfall

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born on June 19, 1964 in New York, USA. In the autumn of 1977 Johnson attended Eton College in Berkshire on a King’s Scholarship, and after graduating from Eton, Johnson studied in Australia for a year. After that, Johnson studied Classics at Balliol College, Oxford University. During this period, Boris Johnson became a popular and well-known public figure at Oxford University. This laid the foundation for his later political career and would have a far-reaching impact on him. Early in Boris Johnson’s political career, Johnson he co-edited the campus satirical magazine Tributary with Darius Guppy. In 1984, Johnson was elected secretary of the Oxford Union, a student debating society, and was unsuccessful in running for president of the debating society. In 1986, Johnson ran successfully for the presidency again with the help of Frank Luntz, a later American political adviser. In the years between 1987 and 1989, Johnson wrote a cover letter to the office of Max Hastings, editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, through his connections as the chairman of the Oxford Debate Society, and was eventually hired. In the spring of 1989, Johnson was sent by the newspaper to Brussels to cover the European Commission. As a critic of then-European Commission President Jacques Delors, he made a name for himself as a rare Eurosceptic journalist in Brussels.

Johnson’s articles, which made him the favorite journalist of the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, have also heightened tensions between pro-Europeans and Eurosceptics within the Conservative Party. The tension was widely seen as a reason for the Conservative Party’s defeat in the 1997 general election. His work also had a key influence on the emergence of the right-wing UKIP party in the early 1990s. Back in London, Johnson applied to become a war correspondent, but his editor-in-chief turned him down and promoted him to become the assistant of editor-in-chief and chief political columnist. Johnson’s column was widely praised for its ideological eclecticism and unique style of writing, and won Newspaper Digest’s Commentator of the Year Award.

From 1993 onwards, Johnson showed his desire to enter politics and began to develop his political career. At the time, he hoped to run as a Conservative candidate in the 1994 European Parliament elections, but he ended up not running because he couldn’t find a constituency. So he turned to seek his own constituency in the British House of Commons. After another rejection, he was sent by the Conservatives to run for Clwyd South, the Labour safety seat in Wales. After six weeks of campaigning, he lost to the Labour candidate in the 1997 general election with 9,091 votes, 23 per cent.

After former Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine retired and his MP for Henry became vacant, Johnson decided to fight to be the Conservative candidate for the constituency, the safe Conservative seat in Oxfordshire. In the end he was selected. In the 2001 general election, Johnson won a majority of 8,500 votes as the Conservative candidate for the constituency, aided by high television exposure. During his first four-year term as MP, he participated in more than half of the votes in the House of Commons, which has dropped to 45% in his second term. For the most part, Johnson supports Conservative positions.

Conservative leader Duncan Smith was ousted in November 2003 and replaced by Michael Howard. Howard sees Johnson as the most popular Conservative politician and elected official, appointing him as Conservative vice-chairman to oversee the party’s campaign. In the shadow cabinet reshuffle in May 2004, Howard also appointed Johnson as deputy shadow arts minister. In the 2005 general election, Johnson was re-elected as Henry’s MP, increasing his majority to 12,793 votes.

Starting in 2008, Johnson entered the highlight of his political career. In 2008 Johnson was successful in the Greater London mayoral election. During the first term of the mayor (2008-2012), the content of his administration did not change much from that of the former mayor Livingstone, but he did reverse a series of measures implemented by the Livingstone government, such as ending the city’s oil deal with Venezuela was shut down, and the public newspaper The Londoner was closed. In 2012, Johnson again defeated Livingstone to be elected mayor of Greater London. In August 2014, he became a candidate for the Conservative Party’s safe Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituencies for the 2015 UK general election and officially became a candidate in September. Johnson was re-elected to the UK House of Commons in the UK general election on May 7, 2015. On May 7, 2016, Johnson stepped down as Mayor of Greater London. On 13 July 2016, with Theresa May as the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Johnson was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.

In 2018, after Johnson resigned as foreign secretary, he signed a contract with the Telegraph media group, which is part of the Daily Telegraph, to write a column for the latter. In June 2019, as Teresa May resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, he announced as a candidate to participate in the subsequent Conservative Party leadership election, in order to seek Prime Minister in July. And in multiple rounds of votes by members of the parliament, he has all voted away from other opponents. In the end, he was announced on July 23 that he was successfully elected as the leader of the Conservative Party, and went to Buckingham Palace the next afternoon to accept the Queen’s invitation to succeed Theresa May as British Prime Minister.

In July 2022, Boris Johnson has agreed to resign, but hopes to stay in office until this autumn, when the Conservative Party elects a successor.

By Tao Cheng

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