Two months before he led the Conservative party to its biggest election victory since the heyday of Margaret Thatcher, Boris Johnson--who on Thursday morning agreed to resign as UK prime minister--was in Luxembourg to meet with Jean-Claude Juncker and Xavier Bettel. The stopover was part of a whirlwind tour Johnson was making as the deadline for a Brexit deal loomed. His lunch with Juncker, the then president of the European Commission, was by all accounts an amiable affair--both men are notable bon vivants and despite their differences, one can imagine them enjoying the menu (which reportedly included snails) at Le Bouquet Garni.

But the meeting between Johnson (we steadfastly refuse to call him “Boris”) and Bettel was a different kettle of fish. A post-meeting press conference arranged for the courtyard of the prime minister’s office just off the place Clairefontaine ended up being a one-man show when Johnson refused to address the media because of a noisy but good-natured protest by British citizens opposed to Brexit on the adjoining square. As , the man who compared himself to the Hulk had become the Invisible Man.

The media had a field day as a visibly angered Bettel took to the podium alone and laid into Johnson’s cherry-picking plans for Brexit and those Conservatives who blamed the EU for the lack of progress on a deal that suited them.

It would not be the last time in 2019 that Johnson would decline facing the media. During the election campaign he famously refused to attend a Channel 4 party leader debate on climate change and the broadcaster instead placed a block of ice on an empty podium. Two weeks later Johnson allegedly hid in a fridge rather than face a live interview with Piers Morgan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.

Yet, Johnson still won an 80-seat majority for his Conservative party, and, despite covid, all seemed to be going swimmingly well when, a year later, he proclaimed that he had agreed a post-Brexit trade deal that allowed the UK to “take back control of our laws and our destiny.”

No way back

But behind the scenes all was clearly not well. Johnson, a narcissist and proven liar, had been disregarding the very covid pandemic lockdown rules that he had drawn up. He then proceeded to lie in parliament about whether parties that broke those rules had taken place in Downing Street and, when it was proven they had taken place, about how much he knew about them.

Johnson’s constant squirming and refusal to face the truth has now come back to haunt him over another scandal which proved to be the final straw even for the majority of his most loyal supporters in government.

In Luxembourg three years ago, even he felt ambushed by the occasion, Johnson could have shown some spine and gone to talk to the protestors and then addressed the media. He chose to scuttle away. He was, in many commentators’ eyes, left humiliated.

Now he has clung on to his premiership for too long despite repeated calls for his resignation over the past few months, and again faces humiliation. And unlike Donald Trump across the Atlantic, there will be no way back into politics for Johnson once he has gone.