Boris Johnson's premiership, which had been hanging on a thread, finally saw its finale on Thursday morning, July 7 as the scandal-ridden PM made a public speech to announce his resignation. Amidst a flurry of allegations and ministerial resignations, Johnson finally succumbed to the inevitable after continuously battling for his position.

Throughout his chequered spell as UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson's reputation was marred with high-profile scandals and ethical allegations which eventually led to his downfall. From highs to lows, let's take a look at Boris Johnson's political career before he was brought down by the scandals of his own making.

Born in 1964 to a wealthy upper-middle-class British family, Boris Johnson lived in New York City before attending an elite boarding school in England. He won a scholarship to Eton College and later studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was president of the Oxford Union. Johnson specialized in Ancient Literature and Classical Philosophy and graduated with an upper second-class degree.

Boris Johnson's journalistic career took off in 1994 when Johnson was appointed assistant editor and political columnist for The Spectator. He wrote many controversial and ethically unacceptable articles, calling black people 'piccaninnies'. It was only years later when he ran for election as Mayor of London that Johnson make an apology regarding his 'racist' articles.

Boris Johnson started his journalistic career as a trainee at The Times of London. However, he was fired for fabricating a false quote about King Edward II and his suspected gay lover. From 1998 to 1994, he worked as the Brussels correspondent for The Daily Telegraph.

Johnson's stint as The Spectator's political editor ended in 2004 after rumors about his affair with a British columnist spread. In the meantime, Johnson also made a crossover to politics, campaigning with his father, Stanley Johnson.

While pursuing politics, Johnson continued to write, with notable works such as Lend Me Your Ears (2003), a collection of essays, Seventy-two Virgins (2004), a novel, and The Dream of Rome (2006), a historical survey of the Roman Empire.

In May 2008, Johnson, representing the Conservative Party, was elected mayor of London, beating Labour incumbent Ken Livingstone. Throughout the election contest, Johnson gained people's trust by directly addressing crime and transportation issues. One of his most remarkable moments as Mayor of London was when he received the Olympic flag for the Beijing Olympic Games in China in 2008.

Briefly after stepping down as mayor in early 2012, Johnson was reelected in the same year, beating the 2008 Labor incumbent Livingstone again. In a loss-making year for the Conservative Party, which lost more than 800 seats in England, Scotland, and Wales, Johnson's victory was one of the few bright spots.

In the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum, Boris Johnson was the leading proponent of the 'Leave' campaign, in opposition to then-Prime Minister David Cameron. While Cameron was the country's most prominent advocate of Britain remaining in the EU, Boris Johnson compared the EU's effort to unify Europe to the heinous and invasive acts of Napoleon and Hitler. Johnson later came under fire for his comparison.

The former mayor of London toured the country on a bright red bus with a slogan that read: 'We send the EU £350 million ($439 million) a week. Let’s fund our NHS (National Health Service) instead.'

On June 23, 2016, the referendum result saw 52% of those who went to the polls opting for Britain's exit from the EU. Following the result, David Cameron stepped down as Prime Minister. With Cameron's resignation, Johnson's path to the party leadership and eventually the premiership became clearer and clearer.

Before Boris Johnson could officially announce his candidacy for the premiership, Michael Gove, the justice secretary and his closest ally in the 'Leave' bus campaign, turned the table by announcing his own candidacy. Gove said that Johnson could not 'provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead'. Seeing that he no longer had enough support in the party to win its leadership, Boris Johnson quickly withdrew his candidacy.

Following Cameron's resignation, Theresa May became Conservative Party leader and UK PM. After her ascent, May named Johnson her foreign secretary, a move that was alleged to keep Johnson's political ambitions away from her. He served as foreign secretary for two years before resigning in 2018, criticizing May's 'soft' Brexit strategy that turned the UK into an 'EU colony'.

Johnson remained a persistent advocate of a 'hard' Brexit strategy, in opposition to May’s government's soft strategy, which failed three times to get their Brexit deal through Parliament. To support his stance, Johnson publicly told May not to sacrifice national monopoly for being a member of the common union. After May's plan was savaged by all sides of Parliament, Britain was caught between two stools: to accept the 'soft' terms May had struck with the EU or crash out of the bloc with no agreement (no-deal Brexit).

On July 9, Johnson declared his resignation as foreign secretary, again criticizing May's soft policy that put Britain's monopoly in jeorpardy. In his letter of resignation, Johnson wrote that 'that dream (taking back control of Britain's democracy) is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.'

Johnson became the new Conservative leader, as the 1922 Committee – the Conservatives’ parliamentary group in the House of Commons – ousted Theresa May in July 2019, after he finished the leadership race on top.

Having failed to win support for her Brexit plan three times, Theresa May announced her resignation on June 7, 2019, amidst criticism from her own Conservatives. Following her stepping down, Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, and Sajid Javid emerged as the four contenders for the premiership.

With Gove and Javid falling by the wayside, Johnson and Hunt were the final candidates for the Conservatives' leadership. Out of the 160,00 members, an impressive 66% voted for Johnson to the leadership. On July 7, Johnson became the new Conservatives leader and on July 24, he officially became UK Prime Minister.

In his first term, Johnson, alongside other hard-liners, continuously campaigned to complete the Brexit deal with the EU after years of negotiations. He even promised to leave the EU with or without a deal (no-deal Brexit) if the UK and the EU couldn't reach an agreement by October 31, 2019.

In the general election, Johnson beat Labour's Jeremy Corbyn with an 80-seat majority, the biggest Conservative win since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 victory. The victory helped him accelerate his campaign to push through Brexit legislation.

In January 2020, the Prime Minister's Brexit deal passed through the Commons with a majority of 99. Boris Johnson was praised as praised the man who 'got Brexit done'.

After three years of highs and lows, Boris Johnson finally stepped down as UK PM following an unstoppable wave of ministerial resignations, which was triggered by Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak's resignations. His departure sees Johnson make history as the PM with the shortest tenure since Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the mid-1960s.