Strong campaigner, but poor prime minister: Boris Johnson leaves with a mixed legacy, says professor

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Boris Johnson will be remembered as an excellent campaigner, winning a majority for the Conservative Party and being elected to the office of the British Prime Minister, but as someone who struggled once he got there, says professor Nick Pearce.

Britain's prime minister announced he would resign on Thursday, after a number of scandals tanked his popularity, even in his own party. 

"I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019, many of them voting Conservative for the first time, thank you for that incredible mandate," said Johnson, as he announced his resignation outside his residence of 10 Downing Street, otherwise known as No. 10.  

"I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed."

But he hasn't left just yet. Johnson says he will stay on until his Conservative Party chooses a new leader. 

Nick Pearce is a professor of public policy and director of the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. He spoke with The Current guest host Rosemary Barton about Johnson's downfall and legacy. Here's part of that conversation.

Are you surprised at where we've ended up now? 

No, I'm not surprised. I think that this has been coming for some time now. The scandals were mounting up. They wouldn't go away. The prime minister's behaviour in office didn't change and Conservative MPs finally just got to the point where they'd had enough and it couldn't carry on any longer. 

And when we had cabinet resignations and then a number of ministers following yesterday into this morning, it was inevitable that the prime minister would have to go, that he would have to resign. 

There are helicopters up in the air, filming Downing Street. They usually do this. They film the Palace of Westminster, Downing Street, and the car of a departing prime minister as he or she goes to Buckingham Palace, to the queen to hand in their seals of office and resign. And that isn't happening today because he is remaining in office.

And for how long? We do not know yet. He says, until a new Conservative leader is appointed. But that could take weeks or months and there are calls for him to stand down immediately and for a caretaker prime minister to be appointed in his place. So there's still an argument about the manner and timing of his departure. 

I heard a couple of people say it was more like resigning-ish. How does he stick around? How will that work? And is that really possible, do you think? 

Well, he has appointed new members of the cabinet on the expectation that they are simply there as caretaker ministers until a new leader and prime minister is appointed. 

[Boris Johnson] showed no contrition in his resignation speech. There was no sense that he'd done anything wrong. You can well see the sort of mobilization of a betrayal myth, a stab-in-the-back myth of his time in office from the words he gave today. 

But he has to leave. There's no question now that the Conservative members of Parliament, his party, have withdrawn their confidence from him and whatever happens at some point in the coming days, and more likely a matter of weeks, he will leave office. What he does then, I don't know. But he has unequivocally lost the support of his party. 

You talked about sort of the build-up of scandals. Without going through all of them, and there are many, what do you think was the one that sort of pushed people to the edge here and they just said, OK, he can't hold on much longer? 

Well, I think that there were two really. The main one was the fact that the parties took place in No. 10 during the COVID lockdowns. And the public was just horrified by that, a significant turn against him amongst the public. 

And that was reflected in opinion polls, in by-election defeats for the government. It put Conservative MPs on notice that his leadership would mean the likelihood of their defeats at the election, many of them. 

But last week, in the scandal over his deputy chief whip sexually assaulting two men in the Carlton Club, the Conservative club, the lines that his ministers were given to defend his position turned out not to be true. 

And I think that for MPs, for ministers of the crown, being sent onto radio programs, onto television, saying things which turned out not to be true, which No. 10 had to then correct was the last straw for many of them. 

It demeaned their dignity and decency just far too much. They put up with a lot. They made him leader because he won the elections. He did that for them, but even that they could not stomach. 

What about his legacy? Because it hasn't been all bad. I think people might point, for instance, to his actions on Ukraine in the past number of months. 

Yes. I think certainly the Ukrainian people and its political leadership are very grateful for what the United Kingdom has done in supplying weapons, training their troops, and standing behind them. There's no question about that. 

I don't think that would have been different under any other prime minister, however. It's a consensus position in British politics. It's one where we're fully aligned, as we often are in foreign policy, with the United States. So I'm not sure that would have been different, although there clearly is goodwill toward Boris Johnson in Ukraine as a consequence of this. 

On other issues, he will be remembered as the Prime Minister who finally took us out of the European Union for good or ill, whatever you think about that. Just as [Edward] Heath, his predecessor, took us into the European Union, Boris Johnson will be remembered for that.

But he will also be remembered, I'm afraid, for his style of government, for what he's done in office and for a spectacular fall from grace, going from a very large majority in 2019 to leaving office now in relatively rapid time. So history will not judge him kindly, I'm afraid. 

Do you think he was a good politician, or do you think that he was self-involved and worried about his own image and what have you? 

I think he's certainly a very successful campaigning politician. He clearly had popular appeal. He did as mayor of London and certainly did when he won that election in 2019. 

And there will be a section of the British people that regrets his passing, but most people will have decided and concluded that he was not fit for office. 

And No. 10 is a very unforgiving place. It's very hard to be prime minister in the British system when so much power is concentrated in that building and in the office of the prime minister that you come under considerable scrutiny, and any character flaws, any problems in your conduct, any of these things would get magnified. 

And eventually all of those things about the prime minister, about Boris Johnson, sort of caught up with him and couldn't be avoided any longer. So I think if your asking me, "was he fit for office", I'm afraid the verdict of history will be, no, he wasn't. 

Written by Philip Drost. Produced by Howard Goldenthal. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.