British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will submit this Monday to a motion of censure from his own party after the Conservative Party received enough letters to start the vote, as announced by the formation itself. The increase in signatures has been constant in recent days, as details of the parties in which the prime minister had participated in the midst of the pandemic became known.
The president of the so-called 1922 Committee (which brings together conservative deputies without portfolio), Graham Brady, has confirmed that a sufficient number of parliamentarians have requested the vote. “The threshold of 15% of the parliamentary party that requests a motion of confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party has been exceeded”, he has written in a note to the conservative deputies. This 15% is equivalent to 54 letters from legislative representatives of the Tories.
“In accordance with the regulations, a vote will be held between 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. – one more hour in Spain – this Monday, June 6. The details are yet to be confirmed. The votes will be counted immediately after. An announcement will be made in the indicated moment”, continued the leader of the 1922 Committee.
However, Johnson has ruled out resigning despite continued calls from some Conservative MPs and also from British opposition parties.
Minutes before the news broke, one of the Tories who had so far maintained absolute loyalty to Johnson, Jesse Norman, issued a statement saying that he had signed the letter because “Johnson has insulted the British”.
The prime minister can stay in power if he wins the support of 180 MPs (the number of Conservative lawmakers is 359); Otherwise, an internal process will be launched to elect the new leader of the formation and head of government. In this sense, the British media predict that it will be difficult for the motion to go ahead, due to the number of deputies still loyal to Johnson.
After the queen’s jubilee, with its street parties and the explosion of that nostalgic English nationalism of an imperial past of which only Gibraltar, the Malvinas and many shadows remain, the deputies have felt in their constituencies the fury of the voters with the prime minister for parties during the pandemic, his disregard for the truth and his tendency to take people for fools. Not to mention inflation and the cost of living crisis.
Discontent among Conservatives has been building steadily since the release of the partygate report. The defenestration of the leader is – after cricket – the favorite sport of the Tories, who have without nonsense killed, among others, Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. While Labor often retains its leaders even after its frequent electoral bumps (the soul of the party is to be in opposition), the Conservatives do not hesitate to assassinate their own even while in power if they think they have a better chance. to keep it. And in that dilemma they are now.
Has Johnson become a liability just two and a half years after winning an outright majority? Is now a good time to kill him, right in the middle of the legislature, in time for a successor to become popular before the next election? Or would he seem irresponsible in the midst of the Ukraine war and a deepening economic crisis? What do people think? The polls are not good, as they give Labor an eight-point lead and Boris’s personal popularity is rock bottom. That folksy and informal character that was funny has turned against him. Virtues have become vices. The jeers directed at him in St. Paul’s Cathedral on his arrival at the jubilee mass are a terrible premonition.
