If there is one individual responsible for the collapse of Britain’s fortunes and reputation, it must be the man who did so much to swing the vote in favor of leaving the European Union, former mayor of London and current Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who has, in the span of a week and a half, managed to demonstrate epic incompetence, cowardice, and disloyalty, and yet retain his position inside Theresa May’s Conservative Cabinet. Such is the immunity granted to populist politicians like President Donald Trump, whom, incidentally, Johnson recently praised on Fox News as one of the “great global brands.” But Johnson’s own particular survival can also be seen as a symptom of Britain’s seriously weakened political institutions. In any previous era, it would have been unthinkable for him to cling to his job in the Foreign Office. That he has managed to do so is a measure of the destabilization that he’s helped to bring about.

Johnson’s blunders are now a humiliating feature of Britain’s presence on the world stage. Long ago we got used to his casual racism, as he referred to both Africans with “watermelon smiles” and “flag-waving piccaninnies,” and more recently suggested that Sirte, in Libya, could be the new Dubai once the bodies had been swept away. A week and a half ago, he was responsible for the particularly stupid error of telling a parliamentary select committee that a British woman named Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, held in Iran for the last 18 months on charges of undermining the Iranian state, was in fact teaching journalism and was not, as she has always insisted, on vacation. The Iranian authorities hauled her back into court, quoted the evidence supplied by the British foreign secretary himself, and threatened a much greater sentence.

A few days after his committee appearance, Johnson was still not admitting to the blunder and instead flatly denied that the new court proceedings in Iran against this patently innocent woman had anything to do with his statement. (On Monday, Johnson finally apologized for his mistake.) But this, it seems, is a defining feature of Johnsonism. “I am afraid that the Boris Johnson we see now is the product of years of indulgence by the media and public,” Sonia Purnell, who has written a biographer of Johnson, told me. “The more he got away with lies and incompetence—the more people just smiled and said ‘Boris will be Boris’—the more mendacious and uncaring he has become.”

Like President Trump, Johnson denies himself nothing except the truth. He surfs over inconvenient reality and moves on to the next disaster. “The pair have more in common than their hair,” Purnell says. “Both are child-men who unexpectedly won campaigns apparently backed by the Russians. Both have a habit of pointlessly insulting others and a very thin track record when it comes to concrete achievements in power. Perhaps one reason for Johnson becoming ever more apparently devoted to the hardest Brexit of all, is that he must realize that leaders in Europe have seen right through him. Some can’t even bear to be in the same room as him.”

For a brief moment last week, it did look as though he might go. But then this is an especially chaotic era in British politics. In the previous few days, Prime Minister May had already lost—through forced resignations—Defense Secretary Sir Michael Fallon (inappropriate sexual behavior) and International Development Secretary Priti Patel (concealing unofficial contacts with the Israeli government), and she could not let another go without endangering her government.

Had May asked for his resignation, she would have had the support of Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, who delivered a statement to the Observer newspaper last Saturday evening demanding Johnson be sacked because, he said, the foreign secretary consistently “let the country down.” This is unusual behavior for the leader of the opposition, but no one can seriously disagree with his charge. As the Observer went to press with Corbyn’s statement, journalists at the Daily Mail on Sunday prepared another story involving Johnson and his on-off ally the secretary for the environment, Michael Gove, which has much more serious implications for Britain’s future. It seems the pair wrote the prime minister a threatening letter last month, which instructed her to achieve a total break with Brussels, gave her a lecture on running a more confident government, and then provided a list of hardline demands on Brexit. (Johnson and Gove have declined to comment.)

What this presumably tells us about the weakness of the May government and the state of Cabinet relations is shocking. It was as though two generals had mounted a bloodless coup and were now instructing their puppet leader how to behave. But let’s not forget that this letter must have been leaked by the prime minister’s office, because it reportedly had such very limited distribution. If true, No. 10 believes that it is better to warn the public of what is going on behind the scenes—even though it makes May look weak—than to stay silent. In short, the prime minister, who voted to Remain in the E.U., seems to be fighting for a negotiated settlement, which will involve paying billions of pounds to the E.U. in a divorce settlement. Johnson, impossibly, would have her submit Britain to a “hard Brexit” without paying a cent.

Boris Johnson, although palpably inept and dishonest to the majority of Britons, will not be happy until he becomes prime minister, and it is plain that he will do anything to achieve that goal and push Britain, already weakened and impoverished by the Brexit vote, into a harsh and friendless world. He seems to believe it is his destiny: in his recent book about the wartime leader Winston Churchill, it is obvious that the reader is being invited to make comparisons between the author and subject, as well as allow for a slew of mistakes and disasters in the run-up to a great leader’s historic moment.

Johnson’s Churchill complex is just one given in the mess that is British politics. There are many other characters and influences at play and, right now, it is impossible to say how things are going to turn out. With the economy worsening and concerns about staffing at the National Health Service this winter after a 96 percent fall in registrations from E.U. countries, public opinion is on the move, and it could shift to a decisive anti-Brexit position in the first half of next year.

There may well be another general election, but my hunch is that the current crisis will come to a head in a historic parliamentary occasion, like the one in 1940 after Britain’s disastrous Norway campaign, which resulted in Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigning and being replaced by Winston Churchill. This is the subject of Nicholas Shakespeare’s gripping new book, Six Minutes in May, which shows that once the House of Commons is given the freedom to debate an issue, anything can happen. In 1940, Chamberlain’s authority was crushed, and the way became open to the very man who had caused the disaster in Norway and whose career was littered with wreckage resulting from an impulsive nature and bad judgment: Churchill.

Johnson will undoubtedly have the book on his reading list because it is full of startling parallels to today’s situation. But of course the events described so compellingly by Shakespeare occurred during a wartime crisis, just weeks before Dunkirk. Today, Europe has enjoyed the longest period of peace and prosperity in a history, and it must be evident to all but Johnson that things will be settled not by conflict, but talk and resolution. This is not Johnson’s moment, and nor is there likely ever to be one.