It has been a week since Boris Johnson entered the door of 10 Downing Street as the UK’s new prime minister.
Since then, he has made a number of speeches, overseen the biggest Cabinet cull in almost 60 years, and embarked on a tour of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that has included visits to a chicken farm, a naval base and the site of an under-construction tram line.
The new PM has also been holding talks with political leaders across Britain. Today, he has been meeting with the five main Stormont parties in a bid to restore the power-sharing government in Belfast.
As Johnson gets into the swing of things, the Tories are celebrating a “Boris bounce” in the polls, with an Opinium survey for The Observer giving the party a gain of seven points in the past fortnight – putting the Conservatives two ahead of Labour. And Johnson has a 21-point lead over Labour rival Jeremy Corbyn when it comes to stong leadership credentials.
But it hasn’t been completely plain sailing for the nation’s new leader. The pound has sunk to a 28-month low, and hundreds of people gathered in Russell Square, central London, for a “Fck Govt Fck Boris” protest last week, with critics pointing out that he came to power on the votes of less than 100,000 people.
Johnson’s pledge to deliver Brexit by 31 October has also fuelled fears that the UK will have to leave the EU without a withdrawal agreement in place, with neither the PM nor the bloc looking likely to compromise over the Irish backstop.
In an added headache for the new PM, Nigel Farage has suggested that the Brexit Party will “vigorously oppose” him if he backs anything less than a no-deal exit. “For this reason, we are preparing for an autumn general election,” Farage says in an article for The Daily Telegraph.
Click on the gallery above for images of Johnson’s first week.
