Boris Johnson officially ends his three-year tenure on Tuesday by tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland, closing out one of the most tumultuous periods in office for a U.K. prime minister in recent history.
The voluble British leader will be replaced by the current Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who won a two-month battle to replace Mr. Johnson after he resigned following a party revolt in early July.
“Like Cincinnatus I am returning to my plow,” said Mr. Johnson outside of Downing Street on Tuesday morning, referring to a Roman leader famed for coming to power to save his nation during a crisis and relinquishing power when the crisis ended. “I will be offering this government nothing but the most fervent support.”
The resignation ends one of the most colorful and controversial terms of any prime minister, including a 10-week lame duck period when the 58-year-old politician used the time to serve out his duties, start burnishing his reputation after a series of scandals—and have a bit of fun.
Mr. Johnson’s three years in office were among the most tumultuous in recent political history. He presided over a divorce with the European Union, a pandemic and the response to a war in Ukraine. He also got married for the third time, had two children and was hospitalized with Covid-19.
Despite the drumbeat of scandals—ranging from donors secretly paying for golden wallpaper in his Downing Street residence to attending parties held during Covid-19 lockdowns—he retains strong support among Conservative Party members, in part because his sense of humor allowed him to connect with voters from diverse backgrounds in a way few other politicians could, analysts said.
Those qualities, and his strong support for Britain leaving the EU, allowed him to build an electoral coalition that extended beyond the Conservatives’ traditional base in wealthier southern England to working class parts of northern England where voters disliked Conservative icon Margaret Thatcher but voted for Mr. Johnson, said Tony Travers, the director of LSE London, a research center at the London School of Economics.
Mr. Johnson has also never lost an election in which he was involved in since 1997, making many Conservatives believe he has the elixir of electoral success. “Boris seems to have particularly magic ingredients that aren’t normally gifted to other politicians,” Mr. Travers said.
While it is easy to view Mr. Johnson’s last weeks in office as him simply having fun, the departing leader also had one eye on history and his legacy, he added. “The valedictory tour, and the inevitable autobiography, are his effort to shape how history views him: I may have had controversy, but I got the big calls right.”