Boris Johnson

Events

Unlawful prorogation of Parliament

  • Attempted to unlawfully prorogate parliament for a month in an attempt to stop MPs debating brexit and passing law to stop a no-deal Brexit by the 31st October cutoff date

    • Had to get the approval of the Monarch to do this and so dragged the Queen into political affairs

Brexit

  • During his campaign, he promised to leave the EU without a deal if the exit agreement was not to his satisfaction by October 31, 2019.

    • When he won the election, he pledged to “deliver Brexit, unite the country, and defeat Jeremy Corbyn,” finally promising to “energize the country.”

  • Members of the opposition and 21 Conservative MPs came together in September on a vote that allowed the House of Commons to temporarily usurp the government’s control of the legislative body’s agenda, humiliating Johnson

    • He then effectively expelled the 21 dissident MPs from the Conservative Party. The rebellion allowed a vote to be held on a bill that would mandate Johnson to request a delay for Brexit.

  • In a scrabble for control, Boris announced that he would call a snap election.

    • However, under the Fixed Terms of Parliament Act, the PM must have the support of at least two-thirds of the House of Commons to hold a snap election when it falls outside of the fixed five-year terms, meaning that Johnson would have to win opposition support for that vote due to his minority inherited from May.

  • The House of Commons voted 327–299 to force Johnson to request a delay of the British withdrawal from the EU until January 31, 2020, if by October 19, 2019, he had not either submitted an agreement on Brexit for Parliament’s approval or gotten the House of Commons to approve a no-deal Brexit.

    • On the 22nd of October the House of Commons approved Johnson’s revised plan in principle but quickly blocked his effort to push the agreement through to formal Parliamentary acceptance before the October 31 deadline

      • Johnson was compelled to ask the EU for an extension of the deadline, which was granted, and the deadline was reset for January 31, 2020.

  • He called a snap election, winning 365 seats and increasing the Tory’s presence in the House of Commons by 47 seats.

    • With a solid majority in place, Johnson was able to guide his preferred version of Brexit across the finish line.

    • In his address to the British people late on January 31, 2020, as the U.K. formally withdrew from the EU, Johnson said: “This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.”

COVID-19

  • Following the guidance of key scientific advisors that the best way to limit the long-term effects of the pandemic would be to allow the virus to generate “herd immunity,” the Johnson government initially took a low-key approach to combating the pandemic

    • This was very much at odds with the rest of the world, and his mistakes soon became apparent

  • By mid-March 2020, as COVID-19 began spreading rapidly in Britain, the weakness of this approach had become clear

    • The government imposed social-distancing and mask-wearing requirements, along with a lockdown that included the closing of schools, pubs, restaurants, and other businesses.

  • Boris contracted the virus at the end of March, becoming so ill that he had to be hospitalized and spend three nights in an ICU.

    • While he was unwell, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab led the government. 

  • Over the next year, Johnson started/ended a series of stay-at-home orders (varied by region) as the spread of the disease changed in Britain.

    • Although many observers were critical of Johnson’s slow and unsteady response to the crisis, British scientists aided by government funding, made historically rapid advances on the vaccine front. 

      • The University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca developed and successfully tested one of the first effective vaccines.

        • In December 2020 the U.K. became the first country to approve and deploy the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, vaccinating the elderly and disabled before starting on the rest of the country.

          • By March 2021 the U.K. had suffered more COVID-19-related deaths (about 126,000) than all but four other countries.

Partygate

  • In November, reports began surfacing that members of the cabinet and staff, as well as Boris himself, had attended parties earlier in the pandemic that violated social gatherings prohibitions set by the government.

    • The resulting scandal hinged not only on the nature of the alleged violations but also on Johnson’s initial insistence that the government-issued guidelines had been “followed at all times.”

      • As reports came to light of an increasing number of illegal social gatherings at Downing Street, during lockdowns imposed because of the public health crisis in 2020 and 2021, Johnson apologised for having attended one such party at which drinks were served but which he said he had thought was going to be a work event. 

  • In late January 2022 an investigation into the affair by senior civil servant Sue Gray was reported to Parliament, (although  truncated and redacted as not to compromise the investigation by the London Metropolitan Police)

    • Gray indicated that “there were failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of No. 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times” and that “some of the events should not have been allowed to take place” whereas “other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”

  • The Met investigation led to Johnson being served a “fixed penalty notice” in April and being fined for his transgressions of pandemic-related rules

    • This made him the first incumbent British prime minister in living memory found to have broken the law.