It is tempting to view Boris Johnson’s sudden resignation from Britain’s Parliament on Friday evening as merely another twist in a serpentine career, a tactical retreat rather than a political epitaph.
After all, the language in his 1,035-word statement was defiant and aggrieved, peppered with reminders of the thumping electoral victory that he had delivered for the Conservative Party less than four years ago and pregnant with the possibility that he could do so again in the future.
As he has on so many other occasions, Johnson seemed to be channeling his political hero, Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader who was swept out of power in 1945 only to return to Downing Street in triumph six years later.
