British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's departure Thursday -- after a tidal wave of resignations from his top team -- comes just three years after he took over from Theresa May in an internal Conservative leadership contest.
Boris Johnson rode his luck throughout his career, bouncing back from a succession of setbacks and scandals that would have sunk other less popular politicians.
But the luck of a man once likened to a "greased piglet" for his ability to escape controversies finally ran out, after a slew of high-profile resignations from his scandal-hit government.
The departure of cabinet big hitters Rishi Sunak as finance minister and Sajid Javid as health secretary on Tuesday weakened the under-pressure prime minister just as he needed allies the most.
Sonia Purnell, Johnson's former Daily Telegraph colleague, suggested that Sunak and Javid may have realised what she and others have before them.
"The closer you get to him, the less you like him, and the less you can trust him," she told Sky News.
"He really does let everyone down, at every point he really does mislead you."
He became an MP in 2004, with the Tory leader at the time, Michael Howard, sacking him from his shadow cabinet for lying about an extra-marital affair.
From 2008 to 2016 he served two terms as mayor of London, promoting himself as a pro-EU liberal, a stance which he abandoned as soon as the Brexit referendum came about.
He became "leave" campaign's figurehead, capitalising on his popular image as a unconventional but likeable rogue as the quickest route to power.
His former editor at the Telegraph, Max Hastings, described it as cynical -- but not unexpected. Johnson, he said, "cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification".
On Wednesday, as calls mounted for Johnson to go, Hastings wrote in The Times that the prime minister had "broken every rule of decency, and made no attempt to pursue a coherent policy agenda beyond Brexit".
But he was "the same moral bankrupt as when the Conservative party chose him, as shambolic in his conduct of office as in his management of his life".
"We now need a prime minister who will restore dignity and self-respect to the country and its governance," he added.
