Prime Minister Boris Johnson has survived a confidence vote by members of his Conservative Party despite the (surprisingly?) a high number of MP’s who rebelled against him.
The Prime Minister’s credibility has been shaken by several scandals during the last months, which pushed several dozen lawmakers to send letters to the chair of the Tory backbench 1922 committee. The scandal which has been the most heard commonly known as “Partygate” was a series of parties organised at Downing Street despite the official lockdown imposed on UK citizens.
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Boris Johnson rejoiced about the result by telling the media that the result of the voting is, in his opinion „a very good result for politics and for the country.„
„I think it’s a convincing result, a decisive result, and what it means is that as a government we can move on and focus on the stuff that really matters to people,” he explained.
An element that strikes the attention is that over 40% of Johnson’s own parliamentary party members refused to back him. In the last general election held three years ago, Johnson led the Conservative Party to a landslide victory.
In a letter he wrote to his fellow party members, Boris Johnson argued that his input in the Conservative Party’s success has led it to historical heights – its biggest electoral win in 40 years, as PA Media reports.
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Johnson’s success did not make everybody smile. Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, for example, called Johnson an „utterly lame duck” on Twitter following shortly after the vote.
„That result is surely the worst of all worlds for the Tories. But much more importantly: at a time of huge challenge, it saddles the UK with an utterly lame duck PM,” she wrote on Monday night.
Boris Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May also faced a confidence vote in 2018, which she won by 63%, a better result than Johnson’s 58.6%.
The Prime Minister mentioned that he would be keen on organising a snap election to gain a new mandate from the public, as CNN reports.
Image: Twitter (@BorisJohnson)
Author: Sébastien Meuwissen
