Boris Johnson gave an unapologetic speech outside Downing Street on Tuesday morning on his final day as UK prime minister before handing over to new Tory party leader Liz Truss.
Johnson and Truss will both meet the Queen at her Balmoral estate in Scotland to formalise the new regime after a gruelling leadership race over the summer.
Truss will then return to London to announce her cabinet and address the energy crisis facing the country, with a relief package that could cost up to £100bn widely expected to be unveiled on Thursday.
In his leaving speech, Johnson reeled off a list of his administration’s achievements.
Johnson, who was a central figure in the 2016 campaign to take Britain out of the EU, led the Conservative party to a historic victory in the 2019 general election by seizing swaths of former Labour heartlands which had voted for Brexit.
But he was forced to announce he would quit in July after a string of scandals, including police fines for parties held at 10 Downing Street during Covid-19 lockdowns.
On Tuesday morning he said that he would give his complete support to Truss, who on Monday beat Rishi Sunak to emerge as party leader.
“I’m like one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function and I will be gently re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly in some remote, obscure corner of the Pacific,” he said.
“Like Cincinnatus I am returning to my plough and will be offering this government nothing but the most fervent support.”
Johnson did not dwell on the host of complex dilemmas facing his successor, which range from soaring inflation and an expected recession to a wave of strikes.
Instead, he chose to focus on positive points, saying that private sector investment was “flooding in” and unemployment was at its lowest level for half a century. “We got this economy moving again, despite the opposition and the naysayers.”
He declared that he had left the economy strong enough to enable the new administration to give people “the cash they need” to get through the energy crisis.
“If Putin thinks he can succeed by bullying or blackmailing the British people he is utterly deluded,” he said.
He said his government had “got Brexit done”, carried out the fastest Covid vaccine rollout in Europe, started work on high-speed rail lines and delivered early supplies of weapons to the Ukrainian government soon after Russia’s invasion.
“That may have changed the course of the biggest European war for decades,” he said.
