LONDON — The end, when it finally came, was just as chaotic, messy and jaw-dropping as every other chapter of Boris Johnson’s political career.

伦敦——鲍里斯·约翰逊政治生涯的终局，和之前的每一个篇章一样无序、混乱，令人瞠目结舌。

Holed up in Downing Street on Wednesday night, the prime minister faced an open rebellion of his cabinet, a catastrophic loss of support in his Conservative Party and a wholesale exodus of ministers, which threatened to leave significant parts of the British government without functioning leadership.

周三晚上，藏身于唐宁街的英国首相面临内阁的公开反对，他所在的保守党毁灭性地收回了对他的支持，他还要面对大臣们的集体辞职，可能致使英国政府的关键部分失去有效领导。

Yet far from surrendering, Mr. Johnson’s aides put out word that he would continue to fight. It looked like a last roll of the dice by one of the great gamblers in British politics. His brazen refusal to bow to reality invited comparisons to Donald J. Trump’s defiance in the chaotic days after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

然而，约翰逊并没有投降，他的助手放出消息，称他将继续战斗。看起来似乎英国政界最知名的赌徒要掷最后一次骰子。他厚着脸皮拒绝向现实低头，让人想到特朗普在输掉2020年总统大选后的混乱日子里的反抗。

By Thursday morning, however, political gravity had finally reasserted itself. For one of the few times in his career, Mr. Johnson was unable to bend the narrative to his advantage through the sheer force of his personality.

然而，到了周四早上，政治的重力终于恢复了作用。约翰逊无法通过纯粹的性格魅力将叙述转为对他有利的版本，而这在他职业生涯颇为少见。

At midday, the prime minister went to a lectern in front of 10 Downing Street to announce he was relinquishing the leadership of a party that no longer supported him, and giving up a job he had pursued for much of his adult life.

中午时分，这位首相来到唐宁街10号门前的讲台宣布，他的政党不再支持他，他将放弃党魁一职，并放弃他在成年后大部分时间努力追求到的这份工作。

“I want to tell you how sorry I am to be giving up the best job in the world,” Mr. Johnson said. Then, defusing the solemnity of the moment with a wry line from the pool halls of America, he added, “Them’s the breaks.”

“我想告诉你们，我对放弃世界上最好的工作感到多么遗憾，”约翰逊说。然后，他又说，“但球就开成了这样。”用一句常见于美国台球厅的俗语自嘲化解了这一刻的严肃。

As the political post-mortems on Mr. Johnson are written, the tumultuous events of the last week may come to encapsulate his career — one defined by a gleeful disregard for the rules, a shrewd instinct for public opinion, an elastic approach to ethics and a Falstaffian appetite for the cut-and-thrust of politics.

正如约翰逊的政治生涯终结报告所写的那样，上周的动荡事件可能会成为他职业生涯的缩影——兴高采烈地无视规则，对公众舆论的敏锐直觉，对道德的灵活态度以及法斯塔夫般嗜好政治场上的短兵相接。

“Most prime ministers would have gotten the message sooner,” said Andrew Gimson, one of Mr. Johnson’s biographers. “The element of exaggeration, of turning up the volume, is very characteristic of his style.”

“大多数首相会更早地接受现实，”约翰逊的传记作者之一安德鲁·吉姆森说。“夸张的元素，加大音量，是他风格的特点。”

Mr. Gimson once likened Mr. Johnson to Admiral Nelson, the 18th-century naval hero who vanquished Napoleon in the Battle of Trafalgar. “Nelson said the boldest measures are the safest,” he said.

吉姆森曾将约翰逊比作18世纪在特拉法加海战中击败拿破仑的海军英雄纳尔逊将军。“纳尔逊说，最大胆的措施是最安全的，”他说。

In the end, however, Mr. Johnson’s risk-taking bravado was not enough to compensate for his shortcomings. He engaged in behavior that critics said revealed a sense of entitlement and a belief that the rules did not apply to him, his staff or his loyalists. Critics accused him of being disorganized, ideologically and administratively.

然而，最终，约翰逊冒险的虚张声势并不足以弥补他的缺点。批评人士称，他的行为揭露了一种他觉得自己有资格这样做，并认为规则不适用于他、他的幕僚或忠于他的人的感觉。批评者指责他在意识形态和行政上杂乱无章。

After leading Britain out of the European Union in 2020, the prime minister did not have much of a plan for what to do next. He quickly became hostage to events, lurching from crisis to crisis as the coronavirus pandemic engulfed Britain. A pattern of scandals, which followed him throughout his career, soon overtook Downing Street.

在2020年带领英国退出欧盟后，这位首相对接下来该怎么做并没有计划。随着新冠病毒大流行席卷英国，他很快被一个接一个危机事件占据。在他政治生涯中层出不穷的丑闻此时接二连三出现，淹没了唐宁街。

Mr. Johnson had long thrived by thumbing his nose at political convention. His disheveled crop of blonde hair seemed a metaphor for a messy personal and professional life, which some British voters savored while others merely tolerated it.

长期以来，约翰逊对政治传统嗤之以鼻，事业也因此得以蓬勃发展。他不修边幅的金发似乎隐喻了个人生活和职业生涯的混乱，有的英国选民对此津津乐道，而有的则勉强忍耐。

But Mr. Johnson’s lack of truthfulness finally caught up with him. His constantly shifting accounts of his conduct — whether in attending illicit parties at Downing Street during lockdowns, attempting to use a Tory Party donor to finance the costly refurbishment of his apartment, or promoting a Conservative lawmaker with a history of sexual misconduct allegations against him — finally exhausted the patience of his party and many voters.

但缺乏真诚这一点，终归还是让他付出了代价。他对自己的所作所为不断变换说法——无论是在封锁期间参加唐宁街的非法派对，还是试图利用保守党捐助者资助昂贵的公寓翻修，或者提拔一位有不当性行为指控历史的保守党议员——终于耗尽了他的政党和众多选民的耐心。

Mr. Johnson’s role in campaigning to leave the European Union, then carrying out Brexit and then seeing Britain through the pandemic, will guarantee him a place in the ranks of significant British prime ministers. Beyond that, he leaves behind a checkered policy legacy, and he never escaped suspicions that his agenda was driven not by ideological conviction but by the cynical calculation of what political advantages he could extract from it.

约翰逊在游说英国脱欧、随后执行脱欧、然后带领英国度过大流行的过程中所起到的作用无疑将使他进入英国历史上相对显眼的首相之列。除此之外，他留下了一个良莠不齐的政策遗产，而且他从未逃脱过这样的怀疑，即驱动他的议程的不是意识形态信念，而是从中可以获得多少政治收益的自私算计。

In the end he may be most remembered for his confounding mix of strengths and weaknesses.

他的亦强亦弱令人困惑，可能是今后最常被人提起的一点。

From the start, Mr. Johnson represented something new in British politics. A journalist-turned-politician, he was able to fuse the forces of celebrity culture with an opportunistic, ideologically flexible approach to the issues. To most Britons, he was simply “Boris,” a first-name familiarity enjoyed by no other British politician.

从一开始，约翰逊就代表了英国政治中的一些新事物。他是一名记者出身的政治人物，在面对议题时能够将名人文化的力量融入机会主义的、意识形态灵活的处理方法。大多数英国人以他的名字“鲍里斯”相称，不带姓氏，没有哪个英国政治家在民间享有这样的亲近感。

With his rumpled suits and untucked shirts, Mr. Johnson affected a louche, upper-class insouciance that somehow also connected with working-class voters. His antics as the mayor of London — he once famously dangled from a zip line above photographers, waving a pair of Union Jacks — turned him into a clown prince.

约翰逊穿着皱巴巴的西装，衬衫也不掖进裤子里，表现出一种肆意的、上流社会的满不在乎，这似乎也在工薪阶层选民中引起共鸣。他作为伦敦市长时的滑稽动作把他变成了一个小丑王子——他的一个著名事迹是在摄影师的注视之下，被卡在高空滑索上晃来晃去，挥舞着英国国旗。

But all the tomfoolery — aside from drawing attention to himself — also helped make him a serious electoral contender. With Britain caught up in an anguished debate over its future in the European Union, Mr. Johnson latched on to an issue that would propel him to the top of the Conservative Party. First, of course, he famously dithered about which side of the Brexit debate to embrace — leave or remain — drafting newspaper columns that made the case for both.

但所有的愚蠢行为——除了引起人们对自己的关注——也帮助他在竞选中成为一个有力的争夺者。英国陷入了一场未来留欧还是脱欧的痛苦辩论，约翰逊抓住了这个可以推动他登上保守党高层的议题。当然，他首先让人们都看到他在脱欧辩论上选边站的犹豫不决——脱欧还是留欧——并在报纸上写专栏，为两方都做出了论证。

Once he had thrown in his lot with “Vote Leave,” Mr. Johnson became an energetic campaigner. He helped win the 2016 referendum against European Union membership, used the issue to drive out the woman who became prime minister in its aftermath, Theresa May, and rode a promise to “Get Brexit Done” to a thrashing of the Labour Party in the 2019 general election.

下定决心“投脱欧”的那一刻，约翰逊成为了一位充满活力的活动家。他帮助赢得了2016年反对欧盟成员国身份的公投，并利用该议题赶走了公投后上台的首相特蕾莎·梅，并在2019年全民选举中靠“完成脱欧”的承诺击败了工党。

That victory, which awarded the Conservative Party its largest majority since 1987, emboldened Mr. Johnson when his standing collapsed under the weight of serial ethical scandals. He invoked his “colossal mandate” as a response to those who said he should step down, saying he owed it to his 14 million voters to go on.

这场胜利使保守党获得了自1987年以来优势最大的多数席位，也让他更加胆大妄为，即使是在他的地位在一系列道德丑闻的重压下崩溃时。他以自己肩负“艰巨使命”来回应那些说他应该下台的人，称为了他的1400万选民也要坚持下去。

Unlike in the United States, however, Mr. Johnson governs in a parliamentary, not a presidential, system. Those 14 million people voted for the Conservative Party, not for Mr. Johnson, who merely served as the party’s leader, at the pleasure of its lawmakers. When they withdraw that support, the leader is replaced.

然而，与美国不同的是，约翰逊的执政受制于议会制而非总统制。这1400万人投票给了保守党，而不是约翰逊，约翰逊只是担任该党的领导人，去留由议员们决定。一旦他们撤回支持，领导人就会被替换。

At a parliamentary committee hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Johnson pointedly declined to rule out trying to call an early general election — in effect, bypassing the Conservative Party to throw his fate back to the voters.

在周三的议会委员会听证会上，约翰逊明确拒绝排除试图提前举行大选的可能性——实际上是绕过保守党，将自己的命运交给选民。

That evening, a delegation of cabinet ministers and party officials traveled to Downing Street to appeal to Mr. Johnson to step down. He rejected their entreaties and instead fired one of his most senior ministers and allies, Michael Gove, who had been among those warning him that his time was up.

当天晚上，一个由内阁大臣和党内官员组成的代表团前往唐宁街，呼吁约翰逊下台。他拒绝了他们的请求，反而解雇了他级别最高的大臣和盟友之一迈克尔·戈夫，后者和许多人一样曾劝告约翰逊，他的时代已经结束。

The palace intrigue, combined with Mr. Johnson’s initial refusal to accept his situation, drew comparisons to Mr. Trump.

这些宫斗情节，再加上约翰逊最初拒绝承认他的处境，使人们将其与特朗普相提并论。

“We have this habit in Britain of following American politics, a couple of years later,” said Jonathan Powell, who served as chief of staff to a Labour prime minister, Tony Blair. “We have ended up with a poor man’s Trump, in the form of Johnson.”

“我们在英国养成了跟随美国政治的习惯，”曾担任工党首相托尼·布莱尔的幕僚长的乔纳森·鲍威尔说。“几年后，我们最终得到了一个约翰逊，穷版的特朗普。”

The United States, Mr. Powell said, was still living with the aftereffects of Mr. Trump’s presidency. “In Britain, because our system is different, we should be in a position to heal more quickly,” he said.

鲍威尔说，美国仍然生活在特朗普总统任期的后遗症中。“在英国，由于我们的体制不同，我们的修复应该能快一些，”他说。