Just under three years after he became prime minister, Boris Johnson stood outside 10 Downing Street to confirm his resignation Thursday. "It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister," Johnson said, per the Telegraph. He said a timetable for choosing a new party leader will be announced next week and he has appointed a new Cabinet to serve until a new leader is in place. He plans to remain as prime minister until his replacement is chosen.
The announcement follows dozens of resignations from Johnson's government over the last 48 hours, with numerous former allies urging him to step down. In his speech, Johnson said he received a "vast mandate" in the December 2019 election. "The reason I have fought so hard in the last few days to continue to deliver that mandate in person was not just because I wanted to do so, but because I felt it was my job, my duty, my obligation to you to continue to do what we promised in 2019," he said, per the Guardian.
Johnson said it was "eccentric" for the country to be changing leader at at difficult time and blamed a "herd mentality" for his ousting, though he promised to support the new party leader. Johnson, who lost the support of fellow Conservative lawmakers over his mishandling of sexual assault allegations against one of his MPs, said he was sad to be giving up the "best job in the world," the BBC reports. "But them's the breaks," he added. (More Boris Johnson stories.)
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