Scandal-hit Boris Johnson announced on Thursday that he would step down as British prime minister after being ousted by ministers and most of his Conservative MPs.
Bowing to the inevitable, with more than 50 ministers resigning and lawmakers saying they should leave, a detached and powerless Johnson spoke outside his Downing Street to confirm he would resign.
“The process of choosing that new leader should start now.
And today I have appointed a cabinet to serve, as I will until a new leader is made,” Johnson said.
After days of fighting for his job, scandal-stricken Johnson was left behind by all but the latest in a series of scandals after a handful of allies broke their willingness to support him.
“His resignation was inevitable,” Conservative Party vice-president Justin Tomlinson said on Twitter.
“As a party we must unite quickly and focus on what matters. These are serious times on many fronts.”
The Conservatives must now choose a new leader, a process that could take weeks or months.
A Snap YouGov poll found Defense Minister Ben Wallace was the favorite among Conservative Party members to replace Johnson, followed by junior trade minister Penny Mordant and former finance minister Rishi Sunak.
Many said he should leave immediately and hand over his deputy, Dominic Raab, saying he had lost the confidence of his party.
The leader of the main opposition Labor Party, Keir Starmer, said he would call a parliamentary confidence vote if the Conservatives did not remove Johnson immediately.
“If they don’t get rid of him, Labor will act in the national interest and bring a no-confidence motion because we can’t keep up with this prime minister for months and months to come,” he said. ,
The crisis comes as Britons are facing the most pressure on their finances in decades, with rising inflation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economy projected to be the weakest among major nations other than Russia in 2023 has been
Read also: UK inflation hits 30-year high of 6.2 percent
It also follows years of internal division sparked by the narrow 2016 vote to leave the European Union, and threats to the makeup of the United Kingdom with calls for another Scottish independence referendum, the second in a decade.
Support for Johnson evaporated during one of the most turbulent 24 hours in recent British political history, symbolizing that the finance minister, Nadim Zhawi, who was only appointed to his position on Tuesday, prompted his boss to resign. called upon.
Jahavi and other cabinet ministers went to Downing Street on Wednesday evening, accompanied by a senior representative of lawmakers who were not in government, to tell Johnson the game was over.
Initially, Johnson refused to leave and seemed prepared to sack Michael Gove – a member of his top ministerial team, who was the first to tell him he needed to resign – as his authority. to reinstall.
a colleague said Sun The newspaper reported that party rebels “will have to dip their hands in blood” to get rid of Johnson.
But as several resignations came in on Thursday morning, it became clear that his position was untenable.
“This is not sustainable and will only get worse: for you, for the Conservative Party and most importantly for the entire country,” Jahavi said on Twitter. “You should do the right thing and go now.”
Some of those in office, including Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, said they were doing so only because they had an obligation to keep the country safe.
So many ministers had resigned that the government was paralyzed. Despite his imminent departure, Johnson began to appoint ministers to vacant positions.
“It is now our duty to make sure that the people of this country have a functioning government,” Michael Ellis, a minister in the Cabinet Office department that oversees the running of the government, told parliament.
from popular to deserted
Enthusiastic Johnson came to power nearly three years ago, promising to deliver Brexit and save it from bitter wrangling that followed the 2016 referendum.
Since then, some conservatives have enthusiastically supported the former journalist and mayor of London, while others have supported him despite reservations because he was able to appeal to sections of the electorate who generally rejected his party.
It was born in the December 2019 election. But his administration’s belligerent and often chaotic approach and a series of scandals eroded the goodwill of many of his lawmakers, while opinion polls show he is no longer popular with the public at large.
Crisis recently erupted when legislator Chris Pincher, who held a government role involved in pastoral care, was forced to leave on charges of groping men at a private member’s club.
Johnson had to apologize after it emerged that he had been told that Pincher had been the subject of previous complaints of sexual misconduct before he was hired.
The Prime Minister said that he had forgotten.
This was followed by months of scandals and missteps, including a damning report drunk parties At his Downing Street residence and office, which saw him being fined by police at a gathering for his 56th birthday, which broke the COVID-19 lockdown rules.
There have also been policy U-turns, the unfortunate defense of a legislator breaking lobbying rules, and criticism that he has not done enough to tackle inflation, as many Britons struggle to cope with rising fuel and food prices.
“It should have happened a long time ago,” said Labour’s Starmer. “He was always unfit for office. He was responsible for lies, scams and fraud on an industrial scale.”