tuesday, june 7 , 2022. the washington post EZ RE A
BY KARLA ADAM
AND WILLIAM BOOTHLONDON — British Prime Minis-
ter Boris Johnson survived a cliff-
hanger vote of no confidence by
his fellow Conservative Party law-
makers Monday evening, prevail-
ing despite deep disgust over
lockdown-breaking parties at
Downing Street and broad dis-
content with his leadership,
which one former ally branded a
“charade.”
Johnson won the party-only
secret balloting by 211 to 148 —
surpassing the simple majority of
180 votes he needed to remain in
office. Though he held on to his
job, the vote was remarkably
close for a prime minister who
helped the Conservatives win a
landslide election in 2019.
His salvation may have been
the lack of an obvious successor
within the party.
Johnson had framed the vote
as “a golden chance” to “end the
media’s favorite obsession” with
the boozy pandemic gatherings at
his offices. And when the result
was tallied, he told broadcasters
it was “convincing” and “decisive”
and allowed the Tories to “move
on” and “focus on the stuff that I
think really matters to people.”
But there remains an active
open rebellion within his party,
with many top voices now on-
the-record saying this prime min-
ister is unfit to serve. Fellow
Conservative Party lawmakers
have questioned his truthfulness
and complained that his adminis-
tration is reactive and adrift.
How Johnson proceeds with
his domestic and foreign agenda
is unclear. He is a wounded lead-
er. He and the Conservatives will
struggle to rebuild their brand in
the face of soaring inflation and
diminished public trust. And al-
lies in Europe and the United
States are now on notice that his
authority has been undercut by
his own doing.
Surviving a no-confidence vote
under the current rules insulates
Johnson from additional party
challenges for a year. But those
rules can be changed.
Looming over Monday’s vote
was the recollection that John-
son’s predecessor, Theresa May,
beat a no-confidence challenge
over her failed Brexit deal in 2018,
only to be forced to resign the
next year. When May faced her
vote, 37 percent of her lawmakers
voted against her; Johnson did
worse, with 41 percent of his
lawmakers voting against him.
In opinion surveys, Johnson’s
polling numbers are in the dump-
ster after months of drip-drip
revelations about how he allowed
his staff to turn his office and
residence of 10 Downing Street
into an ersatz frat house during
the darkest days of the pandemic
— with “BYOB” party invites, ka-
raoke singing, fisticuffs and vom-
iting.
According to a recent Ipsos
poll, 54 percent of British people
said Johnson is doing a bad job
running the country. He was also
booed by some when he attendeda jubilee service on Friday at St.
Paul’s Cathedral.
In a scathing letter posted
Monday on social media, law-
maker Jesse Norman, a former
Johnson ally, said the prime min-
ister had presided over a “a cul-
ture of casual lawbreaking” at
Downing Street.
He added that his frustration
extended beyond the scandal,
calling Johnson’s policy priorities
“deeply questionable.” He men-
tioned the government’s plan to
send some asylum seekers to
Rwanda and its threat to violate
the Northern Ireland protocol
negotiated as part of the Brexit
deal.
“For you to prolong this cha-
rade by remaining in office not
only insults the electorate, and
the tens of thousands of people
who support, volunteer, repre-
sent and campaign for our party,”
he wrote. “it makes a decisive
change of government at the next
election more likely.”
After Johnson made it throughthe no-confidence vote, opposi-
tion Labour Party leader Keir
Starmer pounced, tweeting to
voters that the “divided Tories
propping up Boris Johnson” will
have “no plan to tackle the issues
you are facing.”
From the prime minister’s de-
fenders, the message on Monday
was that Johnson had gotten “the
big decisions right” — on Brexit,
the pandemic, support for
Ukraine — and apologized for his
mistakes.
In a letter to Conservative law-
makers, Johnson acknowledged:
“I have come under a great deal of
fire, and I know that experience
has been painful for the whole
party.”
He added: “Some of that criti-
cism has perhaps been fair, some
less so.”
In a communication more fo-
cused on the public, Johnson
tweeted a picture of himself on
the phone with Ukrainian Presi-
dent Volodymyr Zelensky. “Presi-
dent [Zelensky] just updated meon the ongoing battle against
Russian aggression in the Don-
bas.”
Johnson has been a staunch
supporter of Ukraine, mirroring
U.S. actions on sanctions against
Russian oligarchs and shipping
weapons to the battlefield.
After the vote, Education Sec-
retary Nadhim Zahawi told Sky
News that Zelensky must be
“punching the air” because his
ally Johnson would stay on.
But while Johnson has been
cheered in Kyiv, calls for his resig-
nation have been simmering for
months, fueled by what many saw
as weaselly responses to ques-
tions about Partygate and by local
elections that were a disaster for
Conservatives.
Almost as soon as Queen Eliza-
beth II’s Platinum Jubilee cele-
brations ended, Conservatives
announced that the threshold of
54 no-confidence letters — equal
to 15 percent of the party’s law-
makers in Parliament — had been
reached and would trigger a vote.Speaking to reporters, Graham
Brady, the chair of the 1922 Com-
mittee that receives no-confi-
dence letters, said he had told
Johnson on Sunday evening that
the threshold for a no-confidence
vote had been met. Brady did not
say how many letters he had
received. He noted that some of
those calling for a vote had said it
should only take place once jubi-
lee celebrations were over.
Will Jennings, a politics expert
at the University of Southamp-
ton, said Conservative politicians
were maneuvering now — “after
an obvious pause for the jubilee”
— as many have calculated that
the Partygate scandal “will hang
over the PM in the run-up to the
next election” in 2^1 / 2 years.
Johnson’s critics, Jennings
said, have noticed that “voters
have moved on from Partygate,
they don’t want to hear about
Partygate. But they have very
much made up their minds about
Partygate. They think that the
prime minister broke the rules,
there’s very broad support for
him going, and the public don’t
see him as trustworthy. This is
starting to pose a serious elector-
al threat to the Conservative Par-
ty.”
But there’s no leading succes-
sor for Tory lawmakers to rally
around.
“I mean, we don’t have an
alternative,” Business Secretary
Kwasi Kwarteng said on LBC ra-
dio. “I think the idea that we
spend three months or whatever
it might be, finding a new leader
and all that, going through all of
that beauty contest, is absurd.”
Chancellor Rishi Sunak was
once considered the party’s
Plan B, but he, too, was implicat-
ed in Partygate, and he faced a
further controversy over his bil-
lionaire wife’s tax-filing status.
A YouGov poll of Conservative
Party members on Monday found
that Defense Secretary Ben Wal-
lace, who has played a prominent
role in Britain’s response to the
war in Ukraine, was the favorite
to replace Johnson. But even
then, he was the pick of just
12 percent.
Jeremy Hunt, a former foreign
secretary, said in a tweet thread
that he would be “voting for
change.” Some say he would make
a fresh bid for the leadership if
Johnson is forced out.U.K.’s Johnson survives no-confidence vote from own party
Tolga Akmen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, left, leaves Parliament on Monday after narrowly winning the secret ballot no-confidence vote of
his fellow Conservative Party lawmakers by 211 to 148 — surpassing the simple majority of 180 votes he needed to remain in office.Weakened leader keeps
job despite backlash over
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