Brexit and babies – Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson turns 60

Otherwise, there isn’t much to see from Johnson in the election campaign – even though his Conservatives are around 20 points behind Keir Starmer’s Labor Party in the polls.

There are many Tories who want to engage probably the party’s best campaigner in a much more prominent way than a few mobile phone videos. Next Wednesday (June 19), the former Prime Minister and Mayor of London, the populist and repeatedly convicted of lying, Boris Johnson will be 60 years old.

Avoid suspension
In 2019, he led the Conservatives to an overwhelming majority of 80 seats. Johnson will not participate in the upcoming elections. Just over a year ago, he resigned from his seat in the House of Commons, avoiding suspension for lying to Parliament. There is plenty of room for speculation about his reasons for not standing for election. It has little to do with the fact that Johnson’s popularity has fallen because of his scandals and the chaos he has caused in the government. There are still plenty of fans there.

It is said that he is busier making a lot of money by giving speeches and devoting himself to his book projects. Others suspect that Johnson does not want to be associated with the disastrous election results that the Tories are heading for. In fact, he wants his intimate enemy and successor Rishi Sunak to fail completely. This is also why there is support for outspoken Sunak critic Clarke.

Johnson sees the incumbent Prime Minister, who served under him as Chancellor of the Exchequer, as a traitor responsible for his end in Downing Street. Johnson has never said so specifically, but his allies, such as former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, leave no doubt that he thinks so.

Woman is happy with babies
With his wife Carrie and their three children – he has four adult children from his first marriage to lawyer Marina Wheeler, and a teenage daughter from an affair – Johnson lives in a Grade II listed building in Oxfordshire. Carrie Johnson, 36, delighted the tabloids with sweet photos of her babies on Instagram.

Father Boris recently attracted ridicule for initially being turned away from the polling station during local elections. He did not have an ID with him as required – even though he himself had introduced the law as Prime Minister. Furthermore, it has been surprisingly quiet around the speaker lately.

But political scientist Tim Bale is certain that Johnson will not remain in the political shadows. “I fully expect that at some point he will try to return to Parliament to lead the party again and somehow make amends for the disaster he represented to the country and the party as Prime Minister,” he said. the London expert Queen Mary University of London. the German news agency.

Brexit mouthpiece
What was Johnson’s greatest achievement during his time in office? Certainly he and his supporters pushed through Brexit at all costs, as Bale says. Johnson, who resigned as foreign secretary at the time, had become Brexit’s mouthpiece before the 2016 referendum. He didn’t care that he was spreading alternative facts about British EU payments without batting an eyelid.

And how does the political scientist himself see Johnson’s contribution? “For me, his achievement is to convince so many colleagues and voters that someone so clearly morally, characteristically and intellectually unfit for the office of prime minister should be given the job after all,” Bale said. The violent response is surprising – and shows how emotional Johnson’s personality remains in Britain.