LONDON —
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced a no-confidence vote Monday among
his Conservative MPs after dozens rebelled over a string of scandals that have
left the party’s public standing in tatters.
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The beleaguered
leader has spent months battling to maintain his grip on power after the
“Partygate” controversy saw him become the first serving
UK prime minister
found to have broken the law.
If he loses the
evening vote, he must step down as Conservative party leader and prime
minister. The result is expected after 7pm GMT.
Writing to his MPs,
Johnson defended his governing record, including on delivering
Brexit, fighting
the COVID pandemic and supporting Ukraine.
“Tonight we have
the chance to end weeks of media speculation and take this country forward,
immediately, as one united party,” he wrote ahead of meeting his backbenchers
in person before the vote.
But the scale of
Tory disunity was exposed in a scathing resignation letter from Johnson’s
“anti-corruption champion” John Penrose, and another letter of protest from
longtime ally Jesse Norman.
The prime
minister’s rebuttals over “Partygate” were “grotesque”, Norman wrote. He warned
that the Tories risked losing the next general election, due by 2024.
Ex-cabinet member
Jeremy Hunt, who lost to Johnson in the last leadership contest in 2019 and is
expected to run again if he is deposed, confirmed he would vote against him.
“Conservative MPs
know in our hearts we are not giving the British people the leadership they
deserve,” Hunt tweeted.
Jubilee booing
After a dismal showing in May local elections, the party is predicted to
lose two Westminster by-elections this month, including one in a previously
rock-solid Conservative seat.
That is focusing
the minds of Tory lawmakers, who fear their own seats could be at risk under
Johnson.
Ahead of Monday’s
vote, a snap poll by Opinium showed 59 percent of voters believe the Tories
should ditch him as leader. Among Conservatives, the figure was a sizeable 34
percent.
Johnson was booed
Friday by sections of an ardently patriotic crowd gathered outside St Paul’s
Cathedral, ahead of a religious service for
Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum
Jubilee.
For wavering
Tories, the barracking at a televised national occasion reportedly marked a
turning point. Some said they had held back on public criticism of Johnson
until after the jubilee.
But cabinet ally
Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed the booing as “muted noise” and insisted that Johnson
could survive with the slenderest of majorities.
The vote itself was the “routine of politics”, he
told Sky News, dismissing the threshold reached for triggering the ballot as “a
relatively low bar and fairly easy to get to”.
Graham Brady, who
heads the backbench committee of Conservatives which oversees party challenges,
had earlier confirmed that the threshold of 54 Tory lawmakers seeking a
confidence vote — or 15 percent of its MPs — had been met.
Beginning of the end?
At the start of a fast-moving day, Brady said the ballot would be held
between 5pm and 7pm GMT Monday, with votes counted immediately and an
announcement to follow.
He told reporters
Johnson was informed Sunday night — as four days of jubilee celebrations ended
— that the vote had been triggered.
Brady did not
disclose how many no-confidence letters he had received from Conservative MPs,
noting some colleagues had post-dated them until after the royal festivities.
In a message of
thanks for the celebrations of her record-breaking 70-year reign, the queen had
expressed hope that “this renewed sense of togetherness will be felt for many
years to come”.
Conservative MPs
had other ideas, as they openly criticized one another on Twitter over whether
to support Johnson following the announcement of the vote.
Dozens have
broken ranks and criticized him after a scathing internal probe into
“Partygate” said he had presided over a culture of
COVID lockdown-breaking
parties in Downing Street.
Some ran late
into the night, and one featured a drunken fight among staff, at a time when
the government’s pandemic rules forbade ordinary Britons from bidding farewell
in person to dying loved ones.
But Johnson, 57,
who won a landslide election victory in December 2019 on a vow to “Get Brexit
Done”, has steadfastly refused to resign.
He needs the
backing of 180 MPs to survive Monday’s vote: a majority of one out of the 359
sitting Conservatives.
In previous
leadership ballots, Tory predecessors Margaret Thatcher and
Theresa May both
ultimately resigned despite narrowly winning their own votes, deciding that
their premierships were terminally damaged.
“If he wins
narrowly, history suggests it would still be the beginning of the end for him,”
politics expert Hannah Bunting at the University of Exeter commented.
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