Future bleak as Johnson’s power wanes
Prime minister survives party’s no-confidence vote
Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a dramatic vote of no-confidence Monday, fending off a mutiny that nevertheless leaves him reeling and presages a volatile period in British politics as he fights to stay in power and lead a divided Conservative Party.
The vote, 211-148, fell short of the majority of Tory lawmakers needed to oust Johnson. But it laid bare how badly his support has eroded since last year, when a scandal erupted over revelations that he and his senior aides threw parties at No. 10 Downing St. that violated the government’s lockdown rules. More than 40 percent of Conservative lawmakers voted against him in an unexpectedly large rebellion.
Johnson vowed to stay on, declaring that the victory should put an end to months of speculation about his future. “It’s a convincing result, a decisive result,” the prime minister said from Downing Street after the results of the secret ballot were announced.
“As a government, we can focus and move on to the stuff that really matters to people,” Johnson said.
History shows, however, that Conservative prime ministers who have been subjected to such a vote — even if they win it — are usually drummed out of office, if not immediately then within a few months.
Johnson won a smaller share of his party’s support Monday than either his predecessor, Theresa May, did in 2018, or Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher did in 1990, when they survived noconfidence votes. May was forced out six months later. Thatcher lasted only a few days.
And yet, Johnson is a singular figure in British politics, gleefully defying convention and often seeming immune to the rules of political gravity. With a comfortable majority in Parliament, his party is in no danger of losing power. He could opt to ride out the storm, claiming, as he did Monday evening, that he got a larger mandate than when he was first elected leader of the party in July 2019.
Still, for a politician who led the Conservatives to a landslide election victory in 2019 with the promise to “get Brexit done,” it was a bruising fall from grace — one that could expose him to a political insurgency in his party, an empowered opposition, and further electoral setbacks that weaken his credibility.
In 21⁄2 years, Johnson has gone from Britain’s most reliable vote-getter — a celebrity politician who redrew the country’s political map — to a scandal-scarred figure whose job has been in peril since the first reports of illicit lockdown parties emerged in November.