Do we like Boris Johnson?
Our score: 3 out of 10. Real good on Ukraine, but real harm in his trans positions and a record on honesty that a parliamentary committee and the Supreme Court both marked down.
Boris was born in New York in 1964, the eldest of four, and by 14 his family had moved 32 times. He went to school in Brussels, then Eton and Oxford, before becoming a journalist: Telegraph Brussels correspondent, then Spectator editor. He was a Conservative MP from 2001, London mayor from 2008 to 2016, the face of Leave in the Brexit referendum, foreign secretary, then prime minister from July 2019 to July 2022.
His first big stoush as PM was in court. In September 2019 the UK Supreme Court unanimously found his advice to suspend Parliament was unlawful, and declared that Parliament had not been prorogued. The court said the suspension blocked Parliament from doing its job for five of the eight weeks before the Brexit date, with no good enough reason given.
Then came Partygate. In June 2023 the Commons Privileges Committee found he deliberately misled the House over lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street, which it called a serious contempt. It would have recommended a 90-day suspension, but he had already quit as an MP. He called the report a “protracted political assassination” and denies misleading MPs deliberately, saying he “honestly believed” the gatherings were lawful.
On the harm test, the trans record is the problem. In April 2022 he defended limiting the conversion therapy ban to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, and said “I don't think that biological males should be competing in female sporting events.” His own LGBT+ business champion resigned over it, accusing him of trying to set gay and bisexual people against trans people. At PMQs a month later he dodged a tax question by jabbing at Keir Starmer over defining a woman.
The good stuff is Ukraine, and it is the real deal. He made an unannounced trip to Bucha and Borodianka and met Zelensky in January 2023, and Kyiv's mayor gave him honorary Kyiv citizen status. In February 2026 he said on the BBC there was “no logical reason” not to send peaceful ground forces. You can judge the policy either way, but nobody can say he's been fickle about Ukraine.
The Covid Inquiry in November 2025 found the early response was “too little, too late” and cost up to 23,000 lives in England in the first wave. It said a toxic and chaotic culture hampered the response and that Johnson actively encouraged it, citing his failure to appreciate the urgency. Nothing in what I read shows him responding to those findings.