LONDON – Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s support continued to drop on Wednesday, a day after he suffered two broken defections from his cabinet. Several junior ministers resigned, Mr Johnson received a scathing reception in Parliament, and the Conservatives appeared to be looking for ways to push the scandalous prime minister to step down.
On a fast-moving day, Mr Johnson vowed to fight, trying to shift focus to the government’s new tax cuts that he says will help millions of struggling Britons. But in backrooms across Westminster, lawmakers are meeting about ways to force Mr Johnson, possibly within days.
In Parliament, the leader of the Labor Party, Keir Starmer, delivered a damning indictment of Mr Johnson’s role in the latest scandal, which involved allegations of sexual misconduct and drinking. excesses of a Conservative lawmaker.
“Whoever quits now, after defending all of that, doesn’t have the slightest bit of integrity,” Mr Starmer said, pointing at Mr Johnson. “Isn’t this the first documented case of a sinking ship fleeing rats?”
Mr Johnson, looking confused, again apologized for backing lawmaker Chris Pincher, but insisted he was prime minister on behalf of the British people. “The job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances, when he is given a great task, is to continue,” he declared.
Fee-for-money exchanges have caught the dizzying drop in Mr. Johnson’s fortunes. Several Conservatives have called for him to step down, including Gary Sambrook, a lawmaker from Birmingham who is a senior official on an influential committee of Conservatives who control an election. vote of no confidence in the future. This suggests that the focus may now shift from the cabinet back to the party’s resilient lawmakers.
Two ministers resigned on Tuesday – the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and the health minister, Sajid Javid – did so after Mr Johnson apologized for the latest scandal to engulf his government. Since then, several other officials have followed, including Will Quince, the minister for children and families, who earlier in the week staunchly defended Mr Johnson’s role in the scandal.
Their departure has opened up a movement against Mr Johnson within his party that has been building against him for months, fueled by a stream of embarrassing reports of social gatherings in Downing Street. violate the government’s coronavirus lockdown rules.
Mr Johnson was quick to announce the replacement of Mr Sunak and Mr Javid, signaling that he plans to try to stabilize the government and fight for his job. And he did his best to project a defiant image: According to the Times of London, when an ally asked him on Tuesday night if he was planning to step down, he responded with small “F- that.”
However, by all accounts, the prime minister is in greater political danger than at any other point in his tumultuous three-year tenure in Downing Street.
A freelance journalist turned politician, Mr. Johnson appears to defy political laws, survive numerous investigations, be penalized by the police, and a vote of no confidence among lawmakers in his Conservative Party just last month – all in relation to parties organized in Downing Street during the coronavirus shutdown.
But it was the more recent outcry to Mr Johnson’s advertising of Mr. Pincher that appears to tip Mr. Sunak and Mr. Javid and set the stage for the latest round of reassessment.
Last week, Mr Pincher resigned as party vice-chairman after admitting to being drunk at a private members’ club in London where he was alleged to have groped two men. On Tuesday, Downing Street acknowledged that Mr Johnson had been told of previous charges against Mr Pincher in 2019 – which Mr Johnson’s office initially denied. In a ritual that has become a familiar one in British politics, the prime minister apologized on the BBC for promoting Mr Pincher.
Mr Starmer, the Labor leader, could face a reckoning of his own on Wednesday: Police in Durham, England, are set to release the results of an investigation into whether he broke the law by participating. Have a beer and Indians. – have dinner with other party officials during the pandemic. Mr. Starmer has vowed to resign if the police fines him.
