Want to get away?

Disgraced British Prime Minister Boris Johnson found a brief escape from his problems last week — hopping into the cockpit of a Royal Air Force fighter jet as five of his fellow Conservative Party members vie to replace him at Number 10 Downing Street.

Video released by the prime minister’s office shows Johnson, who resigned July 7 amid a series of scandals, giving a thumbs-up as he soared above the clouds during the demonstration of the Typhoon plane.

In remarks Monday at the Farnborough Air Show west of London, Johnson even claimed that he briefly took control of the aircraft to perform some tricks.

“We generally put it through its paces,” said the prime minister before claiming Wing Commander Paul Hansen had asked him, “Do you want to have a go?”

“And I said, ‘Are you sure? It seems very expensive to me,’ Johnson recalled, according to ITV News. “‘I think we only have 148 of them and they cost £75 million a pop.’ And he said: ‘Don’t worry, you can’t break it.’ So I thought, ‘Oh well, famous last words.’

“So I pushed the joystick right over to the right and we did an aileron roll and I pulled the joystick right back and we did a fantastic loop-the-loop and then I did a more complicated thing called a barrel roll and I pushed the stick up and right a bit.”

Johnson then said the jet “started to pull a few Gs,” and suggested he blacked out in the process. 

“When I came back to consciousness I could see the sea getting closer and closer and I started to dream about this incredible forest of windfarms I could see, all over the North Sea … This reverie must have gone on for quite a while,” he mused, “because then my colleague said, ‘I’m taking back control now,’ and we headed happily home.”

In his Monday remarks, Johnson compared the joyride to his final months as leader of the Conservatives.

“I want you to know that after three happy years in the cockpit, and after performing some pretty difficult, if not astonishing feats … I am now going to hand over the controls seamlessly to someone else.” he said.

“I don’t know who, but whoever it is, I can tell you this, I can reassure you of this, that the great Rolls-Royce twin engines of this Conservative government will roar on,” Johnson added.

As the scandal-ridden prime minister enjoyed his time in the clouds, five Conservative members of Parliament — Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat — are battling it out to replace Johnson as party leader, a process that will last through early September.

Johnson’s resignation, a direct response to complaints about his response to sexual misconduct claims against a top Conservative official, followed a series of scandals — including “Partygate,” which led to the prime minister being fined for breaching COVID-19 lockdown protocols set by his own government. 

Even with one foot out the door, Johnson has come under fire in recent days over his absence from emergency government meetings in response to the ongoing heatwave in the UK. 

One source told Sky News that his absence from one weekend meeting came as he held a farewell party at the prime ministerial residence Chequers, northwest of the capital.