In one of his final acts as U.K. prime minister, Boris Johnson treated the British people to one last bizarre speech outside 10 Downing Street Tuesday.
He made his brief and surreal remarks before heading to meet Queen Elizabeth in Scotland, where he will officially resign and his successor, Liz Truss, will be invited to form a new government. “The baton will be handed over in what has unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race,” Johnson said in a thinly veiled swipe at his colleagues who brought him down in the middle of his term. “They changed the rules halfway through, but never mind that now,” he added.
Johnson went on to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for the unprecedented cost of living crisis gripping Britain and talked up his own perceived achievements in office, including reducing unemployment to levels “not seen since I was about 10 years old and bouncing around on a space hopper.”
“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,” Johnson added. He concluded by making a call for his own party to unite behind their new leader, by referencing the relationship between the Downing Street cat, Larry, and Johnson’s pet Jack Russell mix, Dilyn. “If Dilyn and Larry can put behind them their occasional difficulties, then so can the Conservative party,” he said.
