LONDON • Britain's next prime minister is a joker, a chameleon and a politician who has made himself the darling of many on the right of the ruling Conservatives.

Mr Boris Johnson, an outspoken, gaffe-prone former foreign secretary who was London's mayor when the British capital hosted the 2012 Olympics, shares more than a few similarities with US President Donald Trump.

According to a book last year by former White House aide Ben Rhodes, previous US president Barack Obama was one the earliest politicians to dub Mr Johnson "Britain's Trump".

It is an epithet heard increasingly, often with resignation, from British politicians and voters.

In the party's leadership run-off, Mr Johnson staged another stunt that few of his peers would dare to perform. He held up a kipper - a smoked herring - and an ice pack to make a point about the supposed costs to business of EU food-packaging regulations.

He blamed Brussels erroneously, according to EU officials.

Such details are unlikely to worry Mr Johnson. His supreme self-confidence, intellectual vanity and desire to please were forged by an education in which he rose to head boy of Eton, one of Britain's top private schools, and president of Oxford University's famous Oxford Union debating society.

Mr Johnson, 55, loves to quote British wartime leader Winston Churchill and the European classics, which he read at Oxford.

His booming voice, posh accent and mop of blond hair - trimmed in a prime ministerial makeover - make Mr Johnson, known to many Londoners as Boris, or BoJo, instantly recognisable.

Mr Johnson separated last year from his wife, Ms Marina Wheeler, with whom he has four children.

He has insisted that he will no longer discuss his private life, amid intense media focus following a row at home with his girlfriend, which was recorded by a neighbour and given to a newspaper.

The former journalist was born Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson in New York on June 19, 1964. He enjoyed a privileged, peripatetic childhood before Eton and Oxford.

Mr Johnson was sacked by The Times in 1988 for fabricating a quote by a scholar, telling The Independent newspaper later that it was his "biggest cock-up".

He moved to another pro-Conservative newspaper, The Telegraph, where his colourful reporting from Brussels raised more eyebrows.

Despite the doubts over his news reporting, Mr Johnson was admired for his witty writing, and eventually landed a plum role at The Spectator in London. While still writing and editing for the pro-Conservative magazine, Mr Johnson stood as a parliamentary candidate for the party, winning the safe seat of Henley in 2001.

He was sacked from The Spectator in 2005 but remained an MP until he became London's mayor in 2008. Mr Johnson returned to Parliament in 2015, co-leading Conservative rebels to form the Vote Leave campaign, which helped secure a slim majority for Brexit in a 2016 referendum.

Mr Johnson has also been accused of encouraging Islamophobia, including by backing a controversial party campaign against Labour's Sadiq Khan, who was elected London's first Muslim mayor in 2016.

He was defiant when the BBC challenged him last month on his propensity to stir controversy.

"If sometimes I say things that cause a fluttering in the dovecotes or plaster to come off the ceiling, if it gets people's attention, if it interests them in politics, then I think that is no bad thing," he said.

DPA