LONDON — Boris Johnson returned from an audience with Queen Elizabeth II late Wednesday afternoon and, from the steps of what is now his official home at No. 10 Downing St., promised to shake up the status quo and take Britain out of the European Union no later than Oct. 31, “no ifs, ands or buts.”
Backing up his talk with a slew of Cabinet appointments for pro-Brexit allies, Mr. Johnson told reporters outside his new home on a hot summer day in London that withdrawing on schedule from the EU was a “do or die” event for him.
Repeated defeats in Parliament of efforts to break the stalemate over Brexit led to the resignation of his predecessor, Theresa May. The rumpled, provocative Mr. Johnson, a former mayor of London and foreign secretary, easily won a Conservative Party leadership fight to succeed her.
In a time-honored choreography of Britain’s parliamentary system, the queen first welcomed Mrs. May, who resigned her post. After that, Elizabeth invited Mr. Johnson to form a government. The queen was dressed in the blue color of the ruling Conservative Party, though palace officials stressed that the royal wardrobe is picked out weeks in advance and the monarch remains, as always, “above politics.”
On a day dominated by Mr. Johnson’s radiating self-confidence, the dogged Mrs. May sounded a lone wistful note as she prepared to return to the back benches of the House of Commons. With husband Philip by her side, Mrs. May told reporters that it had been “the greatest honor” to serve as Britain’s prime minister.
“I hope that every young girl who has seen a woman prime minister now knows for sure there are no limits to what they can achieve,” she said.
Limits are something Mr. Johnson rarely recognizes, despite fresh warnings Wednesday from leading EU officials that they will not renegotiate the Brexit divorce deal that Mrs. May repeatedly failed to get through Parliament this year.
A slew of May loyalists left or were asked to leave Mr. Johnson’s Cabinet. They included Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and the ministers of defense, business, education and trade.
Mr. Johnson wasted no time installing his pro-Brexit team. Conservative Party stalwart Sajid Javid has been named chancellor of the exchequer, Dominic Raab replaces Mr. Hunt as foreign secretary, Priti Patel is the new home secretary, and Dominic Cummings, the polarizing political consultant who was a key strategist in the 2016 “Vote Leave” campaign, will join Mr. Johnson as a senior adviser.
“The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts,” Mr. Johnson predicted in his first public remarks as prime minister.
Ambitious agenda
The day of transition had a few hiccups.
A small group of activists from Greenpeace joined hands on the boulevard leading to Buckingham Palace in an effort to prevent Mr. Johnson from reaching the queen, but police quickly moved them.
The prime minister quickly set a law-and-order tone in ticking off his ambitious agenda, including 20,000 additional police officers “to make your streets safer.”
While protesters shouted from a distance and supporters cheered, Mr. Johnson promised the 3.2 million European nationals living and working in Britain that they would have “absolute certainty of the right to remain” after Brexit.
Mr. Johnson said money would be allocated for state-funded schools and hospitals, an upgrade of broadband speed across the country and care for the elderly, especially those with dementia.
Mr. Johnson’s political rivals appeared less than impressed by the whirlwind first day of Mr. Johnson’s leadership amid widespread skepticism over how Mr. Johnson can manage a smooth Brexit where the hapless Mrs. May failed.
“Rhetoric and reality are two different things,” Labor Party Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer told The Associated Press.
Pro-EU Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted that Mr. Johnson’s speech was “rambling, blame-shifting and, to put it mildly, somewhat divorced from reality.”
Britain’s EU partners showed little sign that they were in a more giving mood with Mr. Johnson in charge.
Chief EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier told reporters in Brussels that “we are ready to listen and to work with” Mr. Johnson, but he did not budge on the bloc’s refusal to alter the deal.
President Trump, who had a tepid relationship with Mrs. May, has praised Mr. Johnson. Washington and London are hoping the leadership change could usher in a period of increased cooperation. The two leaders are on track to have three meetings during Mr. Johnson’s first 100 days in office, two of which will be at regional summits.
Mr. Trump has welcomed the change in London.
“A really good man is going to be prime minister,” he told a conference in Washington on Tuesday. “He’s tough, and he’s smart. He’s going to do a good job.”
The U.S. is Britain’s largest export market, and annual two-way trade tops $100 billion. Brexit partisans have said Britain would be free to cut its own free trade deals with the U.S. and other trading powers once it escapes the control of Europe.
But skeptics note that Britain’s two-way trade with EU countries is four times larger, with 70% from just five countries: Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Mr. Johnson’s first weeks will focus on building treaties with Europe to replace the tariff-free movement of goods that Britain has enjoyed as a member of the EU.
He also has pledged to work on deals with Australia, India, Canada and the United States. He was born in New York to British parents in 1964 and renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016.
A pressing task will be to replace the outgoing ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, who resigned after a London newspaper leaked diplomatic cables in which he described the Trump White House as inept and the president himself as “radiating insecurity.”
Although the ruling Conservative Party has traditionally lacked support in London, Mr. Johnson remains popular in the British capital, where he won two terms as mayor before stepping down in 2016 to take a seat in Parliament.
’Boris is back’
In bars across the city, Mr. Johnson’s supporters celebrated with rounds of beer. Some wore “Boris is Back” T-shirts on a day when the temperature topped 90 degrees.
Kirsten Wall, a waitress, joined her husband and friends after work at an Irish pub in Mayfair and said she saw the “human” side of Britain’s new leader in his debut as prime minister.
“Boris doesn’t sound like a politician. He talks like the rest of us,” Mrs. Wall said.
She voted for him twice for London mayor and said she would back him again in a general election.
“As a woman, I was happy to see Theresa May as prime minister,” she said, “but she couldn’t take a decision. Boris said more this afternoon than I remember her saying in a year.”
Critics say this affection among voters is part of the problem and dismiss Mr. Johnson as a personality with no substance. Others see him as Britain’s answer to Donald Trump, willing to move fast, disdain political correctness and sort out the problems later. He has already embraced a key Trump policy of business tax cuts as a way to boost investment.
“If there is one point we politicians need to remember, it is that the people are our bosses,” Mr. Johnson told the crowd on Downing Street.
But political perils lie ahead for Mr. Johnson, whose Conservative Party governs only with the help of a small Northern Irish partner. Analysts say the prime minister may soon need to ask the people for a new mandate, and polls suggest the Conservatives will face tough political headwinds in a general election.
Mr. Johnson has ruled out an election until after Britain leaves the EU in just over 100 days — deal or no deal.
⦁ This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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