British Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces a crunch Conservative Party confidence vote after 54 of his Tory MPs triggered a contest following a string of scandals that have shattered confidence in his leadership.
A Downing Street spokesperson branded the vote as “a chance to end months of speculation and allow the government to draw a line and move on, delivering on the people’s priorities”.
Backbench chief Graham Brady confirmed that “the threshold of 15 percent of the parliamentary party seeking a vote of confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party has been exceeded”.
A spate of scandals have tarred Johnson’s image in the past year, most notably the so-called “Partygate” controversy which saw him become the first serving UK prime minister found to have broken the law.
Brady told reporters that Johnson was informed last night – as four days of national celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee ended – that the threshold to trigger a vote had been reached.
“We agreed the timetable for the confidence vote to take place and he shared my view – which is also in line with the rules that we have in place – that that vote should happen as soon as could reasonably take place and that would be today,” he added.
Brady did not disclose how many letters of no-confidence in Johnson he had received from Conservative MPs, noting some colleagues had post-dated their letters until after the jubilee celebrations.
