‘This is it, Folks…’: Boris Snipes at Party, Teases Comeback in Final Speech

Outgoing UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has given a farewell speech outside Downing Street before travelling for the constitutional meeting to terminate his leadership, in which he obliquely criticised the internal wrangling of his party, burnished his legacy, and made a classical allusion to a potential future return to power.

Speaking outside the Prime Minister’s official London residence at Downing Street Tuesday morning before travelling by motorcade to Royal Air Force base Northolt for a flight to Scotland to meet the Queen and hand over his resignation, Boris Johnson criticised the way the leadership competition had been run and even hinted at a political comeback.

Comparing the process to replace him as leader to a sporting event, Johnson said of the process of transferring government power from himself to new Conservative party leader Liz Truss today that “the torch will finally be passed… the baton will be handed over in what has unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race”. The remark has been interpreted as a criticism, given the speed with which the baton characteristically is passed from person to person in relay, an impression the outgoing Prime Minister confirmed by remarking next: “They changed the rules halfway through, but never mind that now.”

Despite the jibe, Johnson did make a plea for unity behind his successor. He said:

I say to my fellow Conservatives, it’s time for politics to be over, folks. It’s time for all of us to get behind Liz Truss, and her team, and her programme, and to deliver for the people of this country. Because that is what the people want, and what they deserve.

Discussing what is to come next for him, Mr Johnson appeared to give a sense of finality about his departure, but hidden under both metaphors was a clear indication that he would one day return to the leadership, speaking to weeks of reports from inside his team in the national press that he intended to do so.

Johnson said: “On the subject of bouncing around in future careers, let me say I am now like one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function, and I will now be gently re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly in some remote and obscure corner of the pacific. Like Cincinnatus, I am returning to my plough.”

While a spent booster rocket crashing into the sea sounds like a dramatic and final end, in reality, these huge and expensive rockets are recovered from the sea by tugs and divers, returned to land, refurbished and refuelled, and used again. Cincinnatus, a Roman political and military hero whose legendary civic virtue is honoured by Cincinnati, Ohio, is also a comparison that only suggests the end of the Boris era is here at first glance.

Cincinnatus saved the Roman state from a disaster but, at the height of his power, relinquished control and returned to his farm: a selfless act of virtue and humility that contributed to his being one of the better-known figures from antiquity in the modern age. Yet years later, Cinncinatus returned to power when the Roman state was once again in peril.

Otherwise, Tuesday’s farewell speech was Boris Johnson attempting to burnish his legacy, with a lengthy citing of his achievements in office, although some of these claims were more outlandish than others.

Johnson said:

The people who got Brexit done, the people who delivered the fastest vaccine rollout in Europe, and never forget, 70 per cent of the entire population got a dose within six months. Faster than any comparable country. That’s government for you, that’s Conservative government. People who organised those prompt, early supplies of weapons to the heroic Ukrainian armed forces. An action that may very well have helped changed the course of the biggest European war for 80 years.

His claim that the Johnson government had fixed social care has already raised eyebrows, as will his boasting about pushing the United Kingdom towards green energy at a time where concern about the massive energy crisis looming this winter is near-universal.