The rebellion of the ‘Tories’ against Boris Johnson is growing by the day, despite the ‘premier”s determination to leave behind the ‘Partygate’ scandal and the patriotic explosion of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. There are already 30 conservative deputies who have openly lost the resignation of their leader, sunk as the most unpopular member of his own government (with an acceptance of -15%) in a survey among the bases of his party released by the ConservativeHome portal.
“The prime minister has serious problems and the motion of censure may be imminent,” former Foreign Secretary William Hague predicted, amid an avalanche of criticism after the full publication of Sue Gray’s report. Hague has assured that the ‘Partygate’ is causing “a slow-motion explosion” within the party and has anticipated that the motion against the conservative leader (which requires the initial support of 54 deputies) could be presented from next week.
“We are facing an unacceptable failure of the leadership,” proclaimed, for her part, the former Secretary for Business Andrea Leadsom, at the time of distancing herself from Johnson in a letter to her voters. Leadsom has not directly requested the resignation, but her distancing from the ‘premier’ has a highly symbolic scope in the ‘Brexitera’ wing of the party.
The harshest blow against the ‘premier’ has been launched this week by former attorney general Jeremy Wright: “It is impossible for me to accept that the ‘premier’ does not assume personal responsibility. What happened has caused great damage to the reputation of the Government and to his authority, in general. To my regret, I have come to the conclusion that for the sake of this and future governments, the prime minister must resign.”
The ghost of the motion of censure against Boris Johnson returns, then, to take shape. The rebels warm up engines for the reopening of Parliament next week. It is expected that the president of the 1922 Parliamentary Committee, Graham Brady, will then make public whether the bar of the 54 conservative deputies (15% of the total) that can launch a motion of censure such as the one that paved the way for Theresa May’s resignation in 2019.
Elliot Colburn, Nickie Aiken and Andrew Bridgen are the other deputies who have raised their voices against the ‘premier’ and have confirmed sending letters asking for his resignation, after the recent debacle in the local elections. Nickie Aiken has even directly asked the ‘premier’ to “end the speculation” and voluntarily submit to a vote of confidence. John Stevenson was the latest to join the rebels on Tuesday, expressing his “deep disappointment at an increasingly weakened government.”
“The party is in an increasingly difficult position and the polls say that we can lose 90 seats,” Tobias Elwood, one of the most critical voices, told Sky News. against Johnson. “We continue to deny what has happened: it is time to get out of the Stockholm syndrome we are in.”
The chairman of Parliament’s foreign committee, war veteran Tom Tugendhat, has also reiterated his support for the motion of censure these days: “I have made my position very clear to those who want to hear it.” Former Brexit Minister David Davis, one of the first to take off the glove loudly and in the House of Commons, is also up for the job in the face of the alarming drop in Johnson’s credibility and popularity.
According to a recent YouGov poll, the Conservatives would have to contest up to 88 seats against Labor and the Liberal Democrats and put their majority at risk if the general election were held today. Although Boris Johnson has regained some ground against the leader of the Labor opposition, Keir Starmer, the ‘premier’ would not even have secured his own seat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, northwest London.
Another survey, this time carried out among the bases of his own party by the ConservativeHome portal, has set off alarms at the same time. The ‘premier’ is the worst valued by far among the thirty members of his Cabinet, with a score of “-15%” that places him even below his devalued Secretary of the Interior, Priti Patel, (12%) or his Secretary of the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, (11.7%), who has also experienced a dramatic collapse after the scandal of his wife Akshata Murthy, who took advantage of the status of “non-resident” in the United Kingdom to avoid paying taxes .
Boosted by his role in the war in Ukraine, Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace (85%) is, today, the most credible and solid alternative to Johnson, displacing Foreign Secretary Liz Truss in the process ( 60.3%) and with the permission of the Minister of Education, Nadhim Zahawi, (66.2%) and the Secretary of Foreign Trade, Anne-Marie Trevelyan (64.6%).
Beyond the double impact caused by the Gray report and by the police investigation of ‘Partygate’ (which resulted in 126 fines for its staff and a penalty of 118 euros for the ‘premier’), Boris Johnson will have to face in the coming months to a third investigation, this time in Parliament, which will have to determine if he knowingly lied when he said that the Covid rules had not been violated in Downing Street.
His wife, Carrie Johnson, who has also been fined, may even be called to testify before the House of Commons Privileges Committee to respond to reports of her husband’s second party – June 19, 2020 – held in the family flat at 11 Downing Street, and which was never investigated by Sue Gray. At that time, the Covid rules prevented the gathering of more than two people from different households under one roof.
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
