From a landslide to a pandemic: Boris Johnson’s premiership one year on from his victory at the polls

Sean O'Grady looks back at a whirlwind 12 months for the prime minister

The year gave Johnson plenty of material for his memoirs (Getty)

As John Lennon asks us still at Christmas, “another year over, and what have you done?” In the year since his undeniably impressive general election win, Boris Johnson has done a great deal (though not yet literally in those tricky EU trade talks), has had plenty done to him and, to his credit, managed to survive a near death experience – joking aside, which is never easy for him. Even if he’s pushed out next year, he’s amassed sufficient material already for an entertaining rip-roaring memoir and a lifetime supply of yarns to fill lazy newspaper columns (thence recycled into relaxed after dinner speeches). Lennon, working class hero, might not have been so impressed, though, and you get the idea that his colleagues and the voters are starting to wonder about the choice they made. 

DECEMBER 2019

Obviously free of superstition, on 13 Friday December Her Majesty the Queen invited Boris Johnson to form a government. Whether she might have had her own doubts about this we may never know, but she was constitutionally obliged to “send” for Johnson as he had just won a stonking majority in the general election. He’d vanquished Jeremy Corbyn, humiliated Jo Swinson (the now forgotten figure who’d granted him his early election), crushed Nigel Farage and emerged with a working Commons majority of about 87. It was the largest won by the Tories since 1987, and the best vote share since 1979. A blonde colossus bestrode Westminster: a frightening if awesome figure.