Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has been elected leader of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May, the party says.
Johnson won about two-thirds of the votes by Conservative party members in a run-off with Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, putting him one step – and one day – away from becoming Britain’s new leader.
Cheryl Gillan, co-chair of the election committee, told hundreds of party members and reporters that Johnson had been elected the new leader of the Conservative Party with immediate effect, following a ballot of the 160,000 Conservative members.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in New York on June 19, 1964. His father, Stanley Johnson, is a writer and former politician.
Johnson graduated from Eton College and later from one of Oxford’s most prestigious colleges, Balliol College.
After working as a management consultant for a short time, he started working as a reporter for The Times daily newspaper in 1987.
From 1989-1994 he worked as a correspondent, and from 1994-1999 as an assistant editor for The Daily Telegraph newspaper. In 1994, Johnson also became a political columnist for The Spectator magazine, and from 1999 to 2005 served there as an editor.
Johnson made an appearance on an April 1998 episode of Have I Got News for You comedy panel show on the BBC channel, and was later invited to the program as a guest presenter.
His political career started in 1997, when he ran as a Conservative candidate, but lost the election.
Johnson was a member of the UK parliament from the Henley-on-Thames constituency from 2001-2008.
From October 2003 to November 2004, he served as a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
From April to November 2004, he served as a shadow culture minister in the parliament, and from December 2005 to July 2007 he was a shadow minister for higher education.
In May 2008, Johnson was elected mayor of London. In 2012, he was re-elected to this position, which he held until 2016.
Johnson was elected a member of the Conservative Party for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in May 2015.
On July 13, 2016, he was appointed the foreign secretary. A year later, he retained his post in Prime Minister Theresa May’s new government. On July 9, 2018, Johnson resigned from the position due to disagreements in the government regarding the Brexit approach.
After the resignation, he continued his career as a journalist and started writing for the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
In late May 2019, May announced that she would resign as the leader of the Conservative Party on June 7 and remain a caretaker prime minister until the new one was elected. Johnson announced his candidacy for these positions.
Johnson wrote a number of books, which include the “Lend Me Your Ears” essay collection (2003); and novels
“Seventy-Two Virgins: A Comedy of Errors” (2004), “The Dream of Rome” (2006), as well as “The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History” (2014). (dpa/NAN)