Daily Mail columnist appointed by former UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson

The newspaper announced on Friday that former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is now working as a columnist for the Daily Mail, in a return to a journalistic career that has seen him write for several leading British titles, but has not been far from controversy.

The newspaper said Johnson, 58, who stepped down as MP last week due to an investigation that found him guilty of willfully misleading Parliament about parties during the COVID-19 lockdowns, will write for the Daily Mail every Saturday.

“Whether you are a Boris fan or not, it will be required reading – in Westminster and for millions around the world,” the newspaper said.

Since resigning as prime minister last year, Johnson, one of Britain’s best-known and most divisive politicians, has gone on to earn millions of pounds from speaking tours.

His return to journalism is expected to be a lucrative new job and provide the former leader with a way in one of Britain’s most widely read right-leaning newspapers to air his views on the government and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

He resigned as a lawmaker with a blistering attack on a parliamentary committee which ruled that he had deliberately misled parliament with his accounts of rule-breaking parties, which he dubbed the “party gate”. Parliament will decide whether to approve the committee’s findings on Monday.

He also used his statement to criticize Sunak, saying the country needed an “appropriately conservative government” that would cut business and personal taxes.

No stranger to scandal, Johnson began his working life in journalism, but was sacked by The Times for making up a quote. He went to work for the Daily Telegraph, where as a correspondent in Brussels he criticized the European Union in lucid if not always precise prose.

He later pursued parallel media and political careers as editor of the Spectator magazine and as a Member of Parliament, and before becoming Prime Minister wrote a regular column for the Daily Telegraph. This column has often had him criticized for his views – he was accused of Islamophobia when he said that Muslim women in burqas looked like letterboxes or bank robbers.