London, Dec 24 (AFP/APP): Boris Johnson is intimately familiar with Brussels. Now he is leading Britain definitively out of the European project, armed with a trade deal four-and-a-half years after launching the biggest gamble of his career.
The Conservative prime minister spent part of his childhood in the EU capital, where his father Stanley worked for the European Commission and lived there again as a journalist in the 1990s when he was given to tall tales about bureaucratic skullduggery.
It was perhaps understandable if he felt torn about which way to leap in Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum, famously drawing up a list of pros and cons for EU membership before throwing his considerable political charisma behind the “leave” campaign.
Johnson’s sway, and propensity for exaggeration, helped swing the bitterly divisive campaign and he intervened last year to end the subsequent political paralysis by seizing control of the Conservative party.
If thus far politics appeared largely a charming procession for a man with a flair for bombast and colorful private life, he has been personally tested like never before by the Covid-19 crisis this year.
Johnson, 56, was riding high after winning a thumping election victory in December, and his initial response to the outbreak sent his popularity ratings soaring.
But he was diagnosed in March with Covid-19 and ended up in intensive care, crediting two immigrant nurses with helping to pull him through.
The pandemic has claimed the lives of nearly 70,000 other Britons, however, and Johnson stands accused of lax leadership after a series of policy U-turns and, in the early days, inadequate preparation and testing.
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