Boris Johnson got a lot of things wrong – but there were some things he got right as prime minister

John Rentoul asks how the outgoing prime minister will be remembered. Brexit is key to the answer

‘Getting Brexit done’ was Boris Johnson’s major project (Getty/PA)

One observer surveyed the wreckage of John Major’s government after Tony Blair swept to power: “Politics is a constant repetition, in cycles of varying length, of one of the oldest myths in human culture, of how we make kings for our societies, and how after a while we kill them to achieve a kind of rebirth.” So wrote Boris Johnson, The Daily Telegraph’s star columnist, on 25 June 1997.

That reference to “cycles of varying lengths” has come clanging back to ring in his ears, as he has been pushed out of office years before his time – in his opinion at least. But the Johnson of a quarter-century ago had no sympathy for his later self: “Some of the kings are innocent; indeed, some of them take away the sins of the world.” A shockingly Christian sentiment, that.

“Some of them are less innocent, like Mr Aitken,” he went on, alluding to Jonathan, the Conservative former minister, whose libel action against The Guardian, which had told the truth about his dealings, had just collapsed. “It doesn’t really matter. They must die,” Johnson concluded.