Boris Johnson has passed the tail of his own Government in the popularity ranking prepared by the ConsevativeHome portal. With an assessment of “-15%”, the ‘premier’ ranks 31st and last among the members of his own cabinet, behind Alok Sharma (president of COP26) and Treasury Secretary Rishi Sunak, who has experienced a sudden drop in popularity to 11.7% in recent weeks.
The Secretary of Defense, Ben Wallace, is, today, the most valued member of the Government and the maximum favorite to the hypothetical succession of Johnson. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has dropped to fourth place, behind Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi and Foreign Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan.
The ConservativeHome poll shows the great difficulties that Johnson is having in regaining the support of the bases and leaving the ‘Partygate’ scandal behind, amid the incessant trickle of ‘Tory’ deputies calling for his resignation. With the former Undersecretary for Culture, Jeremy Wright, there are now 25 Conservative MPs calling for his resignation.
Deputy Nickie Aiken has even directly asked the ‘premier’ to “end the speculation” and voluntarily submit to a vote of confidence. The support of 54 parliamentarians would be enough, in principle, to launch a motion of censure, a possibility that remains in the air in light of the internal investigation of Sue Gray that questioned the “lack of leadership” in Downing Street and the fine of 118 euros imposed on the prime minister during the police investigation for violating the Covid rules.
“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.”
According to a recent YouGov poll, a total of 88 Conservative seats could go to the Labor Party if elections were held today. Among the seats at risk is Johnson’s own in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, west London, where the Conservatives suffered a debacle in recent local elections.
The undersecretary of Culture, Chris Philp, made, meanwhile, an appeal on Monday to his co-religionists to bury the hatchet, wrap up the ‘premier’ and renounce the reopening of the internal investigation of ‘Partygate’ to include a new episode allegedly occurred in the apartment of Boris and Carrie Johnson in June 2020. The chief executive also faces a third investigation, this time in Parliament, to determine if he knowingly lied when he declared before the House of Commons that he did not Covid rules had been broken in Downing Street.
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