Boris Johnson has a few days left as U.K. Prime Minister, but his time in office feels as though it has already come to an end. His belongings have been removed from the Prime Minister’s official residence at 10 Downing Street. He has deferred major decisions to address the country’s cost-of-living crisis to the next government. And as the rest of the country awaits the outcome of the Conservative Party’s leadership contest that will determine his successor—the results of which will be announced on Sept. 5—Johnson is embarking on a farewell tour before returning to the House of Commons, where he plans to reprise his role as a rank-and-file parliamentarian.

Although Johnson is hardly the first British leader to go from serving in the country’s highest political office to the backbenches of parliament—where lawmakers who don’t hold cabinet positions sit—his fall from power seems particularly tragic by comparison. That’s perhaps because, for a long while, it seemed as though there was nothing that could bring Johnson down. The 58-year-old journalist-turned-politician rose to international prominence as one of the leading campaigners for Britain to leave the E.U. And, after several years of stalled negotiations and parliamentary wrangling over what the country’s exit from the bloc should look like, he entered Downing Street in 2019 on the back of a pledge to “get Brexit done.” Johnson’s landslide election victory that same year gave his Conservative Party a mandate to govern with its largest parliamentary majority in more than 30 years.