First Johnson ministry
late-2019 Government the United Kingdom
The first Johnson ministry began on 24 July 2019 when Queen Elizabeth II invited Boris Johnson to form a new government, following the resignation of the predecessor Prime Minister Theresa May. May had resigned as Leader of the Conservative Party on 7 June 2019; Johnson was elected as her successor on 23 July 2019. The Johnson ministry was formed from the 57th Parliament of the United Kingdom, as a Conservative minority government. It lost its working majority on 3 September 2019 when Tory MP Phillip Lee crossed the floor to the Liberal Democrats. An election was called for 12 December 2019, which led to the formation of a Conservative majority government, the second Johnson ministry.
History
Theresa May announced on 24 May 2019 that she would resign as Leader of the Conservative Party and therefore prime minister, after failing three times to secure passage through the House of Commons of her Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill, which would have seen the United Kingdom leave the European Union. Her announcement also followed the Conservative Party's very poor showing in the 2019 European Parliament elections in the UK. Her resignation as Conservative leader took effect on 7 June 2019.
The former London Mayor and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was elected to succeed May on 23 July 2019. He was appointed prime minister on the following day by Queen Elizabeth II. Johnson inherited a minority government, supported by a confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.
Johnson appointed his cabinet on 24 July 2019, describing it as a "Cabinet for modern Britain", with The Guardian branding it "an ethnically diverse but ideologically homogeneous statement of intent".
“First Johnson ministry” enters the record as late-2019 Government the United Kingdom. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what First, Johnson and ministry can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“First Johnson ministry” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, First, Johnson and ministry provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q78356885. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “First Johnson ministry”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow First Johnson ministry primary sources, First Johnson ministry archive and First research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “First Johnson ministry”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “First Johnson ministry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.