Tim Shipman in the Sunday Times

"Boris Johnson is the third prime minister to be brought down by Boris Johnson.”' Former No 10 official.


'Johnson was the most compelling political figure I have ever encountered. He was not as good a speaker as David Cameron, let alone Tony Blair or Barack Obama. And as a manager he was borderline hopeless. Yet he was matched only by Bill Clinton in his ability to connect with ordinary voters.

'However, even he could not defy the consequences of his own personality. To one of the PM’s aides, the last burst of Johnsonian bravado on Wednesday night put him in mind of the opera La bohème, in which the heroine, dying of TB, rouses herself to sing one of the greatest arias before expiring. “You think, ‘If she can sing like that, she can’t possibly die’ — and then she keels over and dies. The end.”

'Even in political death, though, the legacy Johnson sat contemplating that night, will endure. He is the most consequential prime minister of my adult lifetime. Since 2016 we have been living in a world shaped more by his actions and urges than anything else. This was the Age of Boris and it still will be when he is gone. That isn’t the legacy he wanted. But it will have to do.'

Conservative