Boris Johnson says ‘no’, he will not resign, despite repeated calls from his own party and the opposition
- Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, asked Johnson if a prime minister should resign if he misled parliament; then asked directly if he would resign
- Johnson is struggling to quell an internal revolt by his own lawmakers who are angry over the parties in Downing Street
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, fighting to save his premiership amid a storm over a series of lockdown parties in Downing Street, told parliament on Wednesday he would not resign.
Johnson is struggling to quell an internal revolt by his own lawmakers who are angry over the parties in Downing Street, the prime minister’s office and residence, during Covid-19 lockdowns, as well as facing opposition calls for him to step down.
Johnson, who in 2019 won his party’s biggest majority in more than 30 years on a pledge to “Get Brexit Done”, has repeatedly apologised for the parties and said that he was unaware of many of them.
However, he attended what he said he thought was a work event on May 20, 2020 which revellers had been told to “bring their own booze”.
“Every week, the prime minister offers absurd and frankly unbelievable defences to the Downing Street parties, and each week it unravels,” Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, told parliament.
Starmer, who welcomed the defection of lawmaker Christian Wakeford who left Johnson’s Conservatives to join Labour, asked Johnson if a prime minister should resign if he misled parliament.
Asked directly if he would resign, Johnson said: “No”.
At the same session, a senior Conservative lawmaker told Johnson he should step down.
“I spent weeks and months defending the prime minister against often angry constituents,” former Brexit minister David Davis said.
“But I expect my leaders to shoulder the responsibility for the actions they take,” he added, before citing a quote from Conservative lawmaker Leo Amery to then prime minister Neville Chamberlain in 1940. “I will remind him of a quotation all too familiar to him ... ‘in the name of God, go’.”
To trigger a leadership challenge, 54 of the 360 Conservative MPs in parliament must write letters of no confidence to the chairman of the party’s 1922 Committee.
As many as 20 Conservative lawmakers who won their seats at the last national election in 2019 plan to submit letters of no confidence in Johnson, The Telegraph reported. A handful of others have already said they had written such letters.
An analysis by The Times newspaper showed that 58 Conservative lawmakers had openly criticised the prime minister.
Toppling Johnson would leave the United Kingdom in limbo for months just as the West deals with Ukraine crisis and the world’s fifth largest economy grapples with the inflationary wave triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, with UK inflation rising to the highest level in nearly 30 years.
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Boris Johnson apologises for attending ‘work’ party during Covid-19 lockdown
Leading rivals within the Conservative Party include Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, 41, and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, 46.
Johnson on Tuesday denied an accusation by his former adviser that he had lied to parliament about a lockdown party, saying nobody had warned him the “bring your own booze” gathering might contravene Covid-19 rules.
“As he waded through the empty bottles and platters of sandwiches – he did not realise it was a party? Does the prime minister realise how ridiculous that sounds?” Starmer told parliament.
