Boris Johnson

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964) is a British politician and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He was previously Foreign Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and Mayor of London from 2008 to 2016. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 2001 to 2008 and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip from 2015 to 2023.

In his youth Johnson attended Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, and he was elected president of the Oxford Union in 1986. In 1989 he began writing for The Daily Telegraph, and from 1999 to 2005 he was the editor of The Spectator. He became a member of the Shadow Cabinet of Michael Howard in 2001 before being dismissed over a claim that he had lied about an extramarital affair. After Howard resigned, Johnson became a member of David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet. He was elected mayor of London in 2008 and resigned from the House of Commons to focus his attention on the mayoralty. He was re-elected mayor in 2012, but did not run for re-election in 2016. At the 2015 general election he was elected MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Johnson was a prominent figure in the Brexit campaign in the 2016 EU membership referendum. After the referendum, Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him foreign secretary. He resigned from the position in 2018 in protest at both the Chequers Agreement and May's approach to Brexit.

Johnson succeeded May as prime minister upon winning the 2019 leadership election triggered by May's resignation. During his premiership, Johnson re-opened Brexit negotiations with the EU and in early September he prorogued Parliament; the Supreme Court later ruled the prorogation to have been unlawful. After agreeing to a revised Brexit withdrawal agreement but failing to win parliamentary support, Johnson called a snap general election to be held in December 2019, in which he won a landslide victory. The UK officially left the EU in January 2020. Johnson's government responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by introducing various emergency powers to mitigate its impact and approved a nationwide vaccination programme, which was one of the fastest in the world. He also responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Russia and authorising foreign aid and weapons shipments to Ukraine.