Six miles from Downing Street, Jews greet Boris' resignation with relief, regret, and apathy

A bit further along Golders Green Road, I asked a middle-aged woman what she made of the day’s events.

She isn’t worried about who the next Tory leader might be, she explained: “If you ask me the world is one big chessboard and God’s running the world.”

As she walked away, she turned back, and added: “If you go to a newspaper from 20 years ago it’s all the same stories. You can just change the names but everything is the same. God is running the world, I’ll just leave it to him.”

Stopping for a moment as he walked to the dentist, David told me he doesn’t care who the Prime Minister is as he hasn’t voted in 40 years anyway.

"I’ve lost faith in the ruling class of this country,” he said.

“Judging by the way they [cabinet ministers] have come out of the woodwork in the last week expressing their high moral principles, where were those principles before now? They’re all faulty people.”

Many Orthodox Jewish people in the area vote Conservative purely because they’re concerned about an "anti-religious, atheistic" Labour party taking power, David added.

"But the Conservative party used to be very antisemitic. You couldn’t get anywhere as a Jew.”

Outside a kosher deli, Osnat was keen to let me know that she liked Mr Johnson, and thought he was a “good guy”.

"I think she should stay and fight for what he believes,” she added.

“He was honest most of the time, or at least in the beginning anyway. He liked Israel, and compared to everyone else he wasn’t antisemitic. He was good for the Jewish community.”

Straying up the road from his native Hendon, Baruch told me Mr Johnson was “probably a bit crazy” but “maybe you needed someone a bit crazy to get Brexit done”.

He said he had met the outgoing Prime Minister once at a breakfast held in Johnson’s honour by Stamford Hill’s Jewish community. Mr Johnson reportedly told attendees his Jewish maternal great-grandfather, Elias Avery Lowe, would be smiling down on him.

"Whenever you are a minority group treated favourably you have to be grateful,” Baruch added.

"But he trod on a very sensitive point: people were unable to visit their loved ones. That untapped pain was a raw nerve, and he didn’t realise.”

A local teacher told me he was “happy” the Prime Minister had stepped down.

"He was just a liar and dishonest,” he said. “The Prime Minister should be someone we can look up to.”

If Mr Johnson had a rabbi, he added, he would likely tell him he had to now take accountability for his actions.

Having voted Conservative in 2019, he told me he would have to reevaluate his support for the party at the next election based on who their next leader was.

Simcha Bowden had not heard about the day’s political turmoil, but after I let him know what had transpired, he said he was grateful for the Prime Minister’s work.

"He put in a lot of effort to help us all during the virus. We should appreciate that. I wish him success in his future. I don’t know if the next person will be better.”

Mr Johnson’s time in office had been good for the Jews, Mr Bowden added.

A woman behind the counter in a religious bookshop told me she doesn’t know anything about politics. But, she added, she thought the PM had no choice but to resign.

“There’s only so many times you can get away with it. He made too many mistakes.”

She had also voted Conservative at the last election, and would be happy to do so again once Johnson has been replaced.

Heading back towards Golders Green station, the last person I speak to was Yishai, who grew up in Britain but has lived in Israel for the last six years.

He said it was the right decision for the Prime Minister to leave office now. Asked whether British or Israeli politics were currently more broken, he laughed, and told me: “At the current minute Britain is more chaotic than Israel. Israel in general is more chaotic, but Britain has been worse the last few days.”