Already in January 2022, Boris Johnson’s days at Number 10 seemed numbered. He survived, notably because of Putin‘s escalation of the war against Ukraine.
This morning, roughly half a year later, the chairman of the 1922 Committee Sir Graham Brady announced that the threshold of 15% of Tory MPs seeking a vote of confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party had been exceeded. This meant that at least 54 Tory Members of Parliament had lost confidence in Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a notorious liar. However, to unseat their leader, a majority of Tory MPs — currently a minimum of 180 out of 359 — had to express their lack of confidence. If such a vote fails, the PM cannot be challenged during the following 12 months.
This evening, a majority of 211 Conservative MP’s chose to renew their confidence in Boris Johnson. 148 voted against him. All 359 PMs had cast their ballot. This is astonishing because a YouGov poll from May 26 showed that only 22% of the British had a positive view of their government’s achievements, whereas 60% viewed the government’s track record negatively.
The inner-party opposition to Boris Johnson took a risk to challenge him, notably because there is no clear challenger in sight. The man seen by many as his most likely successor, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, was weakened in the last weeks. He was himself fined in the Partygate affair, which triggered the vote of no-confidence. In addition, it was revealed that Rishi Sunak’s wealthy wife, Akshata Murthy, benefitted from non-domiciled status. How can the wife of the UK Chancellor benefit from non-dom status?
Today, Boris Johnson’s anti-corruption tsar John Penrose resigned, saying the PM had broken the Ministerial Code. Former minister and Boris Johnson rival in the last Tory leadership race, Jeremy Hunt, tweeted today that he was for change aka that he wants the PM to be sacked.
Already in 2019 it should have been clear to Conservatives that Boris Johnson is unfit to lead both the Tories and the United Kingdom. Later that year, he lost his majority in the House of Commons, but the opposition was divided; then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was and is a man from the hard left, dreaming of socialism, a Brexiter himself since the 1970s. He represented no credible alternative. Therefore, Boris Johnson could not be unseated although the united opposition had the numbers to do so.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit Opportunities Minister — what opportunities? — said today that a confidence vote win by just a single vote would be enough for the prime minister to continue. In December 2018, he had sounded very differently. At that time, Jacob Rees-Mogg, together with Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers, was trying to unseat Theresa May. After the vote, he assessed that her two-third victory in that no confidence vote with one third of Conservative MPs voting against her was a “terrible result”. Indeed, Theresa May was ousted roughly half a year later. Today, Boris Johnson survived a no confidence vote with 211 voes in support, but 148 Tories voted against him. He looks pretty much like a lame duck. Boris Johnson is a survivor. He has been lucky and got away with far too much during his career both as a journalist and as a politician. But even the luckiest of guys cannot be lucky all the time.
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Boris Johnson (official photo as Foreign Secretary). Photo credit: www.gov.uk
Article added on June 6, 2022 at 21:03 British time.
