In the vote, 211 MPs voted in favor of PM Boris Johnson against 148.
London:
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson escaped a trust vote on Monday, but a major uprising in his Conservative Party over the so-called “Partygate” scandal has jolted his authority and left him with a struggle to win back support.
Pressure is mounting on PM Johnson, who won a sweeping election victory in 2019, when he and staff held alcohol-fueled parties at his Downing Street office and residence when Britain was under lockdown to combat the COVID-19 pandemic .
The vote was a blow to the PM, with 41% of his MPs casting ballots against his leadership after months of scandals and blunders that questioned his right to govern Britain and knocked his standing among the masses.
But Johnson, the master of political comebacks, instead described the vote as a “decisive outcome”, implying that “as a government we can go ahead and focus on the stuff I think Really matters to people”.
Johnson said, “We can focus on what we are doing to help people with the cost of living, what we are doing to clean up the COVID backlog, what we are doing to help the streets and communities.” What are you doing to make it safe,” Johnson said. , who for weeks has tried to steer the national conversation away from “partygate”.
This is a change of fate for Johnson and underscores the depth of anger against him. He was met with laughter and some silent cheers in recent days at events organized to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee.
Several lawmakers said the vote, with 211 lawmakers voting in favor of Johnson against 148, was worse than expected for a prime minister who once won the Conservatives’ largest majority in more than three decades. seemed invincible.
“This vote will bring relief to Boris Johnson. But he will also understand that the next priority is to rebuild party cohesion,” David Jones, a former minister, told Reuters. “I’m sure he’ll be up to the challenge.”
Others were less optimistic, with one Conservative MP speaking on condition of anonymity: “This is clearly much worse than most people expected. But it is too early to say what will happen now.”
Roger Gale, a longtime critic of Johnson, urged the prime minister to “go back to Downing Street tonight and consider very carefully where he goes from here”.
12-month recovery
By winning the trust vote, Johnson has secured a respite for 12 months when lawmakers cannot bring up another challenge. But her predecessor Theresa May fared better in her 2018 trust vote, only to resign six months later.
Dozens of Conservative MPs have expressed concern over whether 57-year-old Johnson has lost his right to govern Britain, which faces the risk of a recession, rising fuel and food prices and travel chaos spurred by a strike in the capital London. doing.
But his cabinet rallied around him and highlighted the government’s successes in what he said: an accelerated rollout of the COVID-19 vaccination and Britain’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A majority of Conservative lawmakers – at least 180 – would have to vote against Johnson to remove him.
Earlier, a spokesman for Johnson’s Downing Street office said the vote would “allow the government to draw a line and move forward” and the prime minister welcomed the opportunity for lawmakers to make their case.
Johnson, a former London mayor, came to power in the 2016 referendum in Westminster as the face of the Brexit campaign, and won the 2019 election with the slogan “Brexit is done”.
Brexit Opportunities Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg told Sky News that completing Britain’s departure from the EU “would be at considerable risk without their drive and energy”.
Johnson has locked horns with Brussels over Northern Ireland, raising the prospect of further barriers to British trade and alarming the leaders of Ireland, Europe and the United States about the risks of the province’s 1998 peace deal. Is.
But there were tales of tales in Downing Street, including fights and alcohol-induced vomiting, when many people were prevented from saying goodbye to loved ones at funerals, causing real harm.
The move has led MPs from different wings of the party to reveal that they have turned against their leader. A former aide accused the prime minister of insulting both voters and the party by staying in power.
Former junior minister Jesse Norman said before the vote, “You have presided over a culture of casualty law breaking with respect to COVID at 10 Downing Street.”
Johnson’s anti-corruption chief John Penrose also resigned.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)