Twenty years ago, Boris Johnson, then editor of The Spectator magazine, was hosting the BBC quiz show Have I Got News for You when he struggled to work out which team had got the correct answer. “You edit a magazine?!” mocked one of the regular panellists, Paul Merton. “What on earth are the editorial meetings like?”
But Johnson knew there was something more important than appearing organised: being charming and entertaining. “You’ve all done exceptionally well on this question,” he smiled to the competing teams. On TV, as in politics, he started out as the man who could unite people in amusement. After nearly three years as prime minister, he united them in contempt.
Johnson, 58, who announced on Thursday that he would step down as Conservative party leader, has been the most remarkable and colourful British politician of his generation. As the man who took the UK out of the EU, he can also claim to be the most consequential.