By DAN­I­CA KIR­KA, JILL LAW­LESS and SYLVIA HUI | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

LON­DON (AP) — Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion Thurs­day amid a mass re­volt by top mem­bers of his gov­ern­ment, mark­ing an end to three tu­mul­tuous years in pow­er in which he brazen­ly bent and some­times broke the rules of British pol­i­tics.

Months of de­fi­ance end­ed al­most with a shrug as John­son stood out­side No. 10 Down­ing St. and con­ced­ed that his par­ty want­ed him gone.

“Them’s the breaks,” he said.

The brash, 58-year-old politi­cian who took Britain out of the Eu­ro­pean Union and steered it through COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine was brought down by one scan­dal too many — this one in­volv­ing his ap­point­ment of a politi­cian who had been ac­cused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct.

The messi­est of prime min­is­ters did not leave clean­ly. John­son stepped down im­me­di­ate­ly as Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty leader but said he would re­main as prime min­is­ter un­til the par­ty choos­es his suc­ces­sor. The timetable for that process will be an­nounced next week, he said.

But many in the par­ty want him gone be­fore then, and his gov­ern­ment has been shred­ded by scores of res­ig­na­tions.

Among the pos­si­ble can­di­dates to suc­ceed him: for­mer Health Sec­re­tary Sajid Javid, for­mer Trea­sury chief Rishi Sunak, For­eign Sec­re­tary Liz Truss and De­fense Sec­re­tary Ben Wal­lace.

Af­ter the lat­est scan­dal broke, John­son clung to pow­er for days, de­fi­ant­ly telling law­mak­ers on Wednes­day that he had a “colos­sal man­date” from the vot­ers and in­tend­ed to get on with the busi­ness of gov­ern­ing.

But he was forced to con­cede de­feat Thurs­day morn­ing af­ter one of his clos­est al­lies, new­ly ap­point­ed Trea­sury chief Nad­him Za­hawi, pub­licly told him to re­sign for the good of the coun­try.

“In the last few days, I tried to per­suade my col­leagues that it would be ec­cen­tric to change gov­ern­ments when we’re de­liv­er­ing so much and when we have such a vast man­date,” John­son said. “I re­gret not to have been suc­cess­ful in those ar­gu­ments, and of course it’s painful not to be able to see through so many ideas and projects my­self.”

About 50 Cab­i­net sec­re­taries, min­is­ters and low­er-lev­el of­fi­cials had quit the gov­ern­ment over the past few days, of­ten cas­ti­gat­ing the prime min­is­ter for his lack of in­tegri­ty.

The mass res­ig­na­tions had stalled the busi­ness of some par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tees be­cause there were no min­is­ters avail­able to speak on the gov­ern­ment’s be­half.

“It is clear­ly now the will of the par­lia­men­tary Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty that there should be a new leader of that par­ty and there­fore a new prime min­is­ter,” John­son said.

Za­hawi, who was pro­mot­ed ear­li­er this week as John­son tried to shore up his Cab­i­net, said he and a group of col­leagues had pri­vate­ly ex­pressed their con­cerns to the prime min­is­ter on Wednes­day and he de­cid­ed to go pub­lic af­ter John­son ig­nored the ad­vice to re­sign.

“The coun­try de­serves a gov­ern­ment that is not on­ly sta­ble, but which acts with in­tegri­ty,” Za­hawi said in a let­ter post­ed on Twit­ter.

t was a hu­mil­i­at­ing de­feat for John­son, who not on­ly pulled off Brex­it but was al­so cred­it­ed with rolling out one of the world’s most suc­cess­ful mass vac­ci­na­tion cam­paigns to com­bat COVID-19.

But the per­pet­u­al­ly rum­pled, shag­gy-haired leader known for an­swer­ing his crit­ics with bom­bast and blus­ter was al­so dogged by al­le­ga­tions he be­haved as if the rules did not ap­ply to him.

He man­aged to re­main in pow­er de­spite ac­cu­sa­tions that he was too close to par­ty donors, that he pro­tect­ed sup­port­ers from bul­ly­ing and cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions, and that he mis­led Par­lia­ment about gov­ern­ment of­fice par­ties that broke COVID-19 lock­down rules.

He was fined by po­lice over the par­ties and sur­vived a no-con­fi­dence vote last month in Par­lia­ment in which 41% of Con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers tried to oust him.

John­son be­came prime min­is­ter in Ju­ly 2019, suc­ceed­ing There­sa May, who re­signed af­ter Par­lia­ment re­ject­ed the Brex­it agree­ment she ne­go­ti­at­ed with the EU. John­son pushed his own Brex­it deal through in an of­ten messy and tur­bu­lent de­bate.

With his mop of un­ruly blond hair, he of­ten looked like a school­boy who had just rolled out of bed and run to class with his py­ja­mas un­der his clothes.

In his rise to pow­er, he showed many of the same habits and abil­i­ties that would car­ry him far but al­so spell his down­fall: He was an ebul­lient, at­ten­tion-lov­ing may­or of Lon­don; a jour­nal­ist who was fired for mak­ing up a quote and filed ex­ag­ger­at­ed sto­ries about EU ex­cess­es; and a politi­cian with an Eton- and Ox­ford-honed tal­ent for colour­ful lan­guage and the thrust and par­ry of de­bate.

He be­came known for his light re­gard for the truth and his glib and of­fen­sive marks. He called Papua New Guineans can­ni­bals and likened Mus­lim women who wear face-cov­er­ing veils to “let­ter box­es.”

Re­cent dis­clo­sures that John­son knew about sex­u­al mis­con­duct al­le­ga­tions against a Con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­er be­fore he pro­mot­ed him to a se­nior po­si­tion in gov­ern­ment proved to be one scan­dal too many.

The cri­sis be­gan when Chris Pinch­er re­signed as deputy chief whip amid ac­cu­sa­tions that he had groped two men at a pri­vate club. That trig­gered a se­ries of re­ports about past al­le­ga­tions against Pinch­er.

John­son of­fered shift­ing ex­pla­na­tions about what he knew and when he knew it. That just height­ened the sense that the prime min­is­ter couldn’t be trust­ed.

Javid and Sunak re­signed with­in min­utes of each oth­er Tues­day night, trig­ger­ing the wave of de­par­tures among their Cab­i­net col­leagues and low­er-lev­el of­fi­cials and send­ing the gov­ern­ment in­to cri­sis.

Javid said John­son’s ac­tions threat­ened to un­der­mine the in­tegri­ty of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty and the British gov­ern­ment.

“At some point we have to con­clude that enough is enough,” he said Wednes­day in the House of Com­mons. “I be­lieve that point is now.”

Af­ter John­son’s re­peat­ed eth­i­cal laps­es and brush­es with po­lit­i­cal ru­in, many Britons re­act­ed to his res­ig­na­tion with sur­prise, giv­en that he had hung on through so many scan­dals be­fore.

“It felt like he can just keep on go­ing and keep on ig­nor­ing it, so I was bit sur­prised this morn­ing when saw it on my phone,″ Him­mat Da­ly­way, an in­vest­ment trad­er in his 20s, said out­side an Un­der­ground sta­tion in Lon­don. “Are you still 100% sure that he is go­ing?″

Now with a lead­er­ship elec­tion up­on them, the Con­ser­v­a­tives will have to de­cide whether they can stom­ach John­son as a care­tak­er leader, a job that nor­mal­ly en­tails say­ing lit­tle and do­ing noth­ing. John­son is not the type to fade in­to the back­ground.

“I sus­pect some of them will want him gone straight away. And to be hon­est, I think a lot of the pub­lic will want to see him gone straight away,” said Tim Bale, a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at Queen Mary, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. “You know, they don’t want to see him hang­ing around like a bad smell in Down­ing Street.”