Boris Johnson has to acknowledge that the end of the road is in sight for him as Prime Minister
SIR – Boris and Carrie Johnson get to look at their gold wallpaper for a little longer, but if they look carefully they’ll see writing on it.
Liz Machacek
Penn Bottom, Buckinghamshire
SIR – For Boris Johnson to call his victory “convincing” surely demonstrates how low his standards are.
Peter H York
Daventry, Northamptonshire
SIR – I wonder how many of the 211 MPS who gave the Prime Minister their support would have done so if they had known as many as 148 would not. Stefan Badham
Portsmouth, Hampshire
SIR – Sherelle Jacobs (Comment, June 7) draws a parallel between the plight of the Prime Minister and the principles of Greek tragedy, which will be familiar to a student of the Classics like Boris Johnson.
Such tragedy involves a heroic figure, his rise to power and subsequent fall – often associated with character flaws. In this case, ambition and arrogance spring to mind.
Although this is not yet the final act of the drama, we, the audience, look on with fascination and expectation, anticipating the concluding words of Milton in Samson Agonistes: “Calm of mind all passion spent.”
David S Ainsworth
Manchester
SIR – It is worrying that the majority of Conservative MPS are happy to have a Prime Minister so often economical with the truth. I most certainly am not. Bob Ferris
Banstead, Surrey
SIR – The shrillest voices denouncing the Prime Minister for breach of trust come from those like Lord Adonis who are determined to dishonour the vote of the British people to leave the EU.
Surely that would be the most grotesque breach of trust of modern times were they to succeed, and a gross betrayal of the people – one against which Mr Johnson’s breach would pale into insignificance.
Sir Gerald Howarth
Chelsworth, Suffolk
SIR – There was no party in No10. Now there is no Tory party.
Eddie Peart
Rotherham, South Yorkshire
SIR – The man is hopeless. This cannot end well for him or the country.
Nick Hare
Sopworth, Wiltshire
SIR – The daughter of a friend of mine is still living in the Donbas region in Ukraine. When they speak on the phone the bombs can be heard falling.
The news that Boris Johnson won the vote brought cheers from those in Ukraine, grateful for his support and provision of weapons. Yet parties are more important to some Conservative MPS. How small-minded.
Jennie Naylor
East Preston, West Sussex
SIR – The Prime Minister may have more charisma in his big toe than the MPS who voted against him (Letters, June 7). But isn’t that the problem?
Charisma is a useful attribute in a leader, but not where it shields one lacking in competency and devoid of integrity.
Dr Tim Brooks
London E11
SIR – Mr Johnson has some fiercely loyal supporters who, no matter how he behaves, stand resolute in their allegiance to him.
But to most of the electorate it is unacceptable that at the very top of government there appears to be a
moral vacuum. Too many important issues are at stake in our country and the world for this to continue.
The Prime Minister should only make policies and decisions with the focus on the country he serves, not with the sole aim of serving himself. For this reason we must have new leadership.
Caroline Wildman
Buckland, Oxfordshire
SIR – The Prime Minister was willing on Monday night to offer tax cuts to save his skin, but has hitherto been unwilling to do so to help the electorate. Charlie Bladon
Cattistock, Dorset
SIR – If Mr Johnson is still Prime Minister at the end of July, my wife and I (after voting Conservative since 1964) will return our membership cards. Peter Bell
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
SIR – I have been a Tory supporter all my life and am now in my early seventies. I have, however, pledged that I will not vote for the party again as long as Boris Johnson is leader.
After the inconclusive confidence vote, the end game of his tenure as PM is surely in sight, and I am hopeful that I will be able to return to the fold for the next general election.
Lt Col Jeremy Prescott (retd) Southsea, Hampshire
SIR – It seems that 211 MPS know that there is no one competent enough to replace Mr Johnson.
Alexander Simpson
Market Drayton, Shropshire
SIR – Mr Johnson’s abandonment of Conservative principles has been my greatest disappointment in his premiership, but I am also suspicious of the motives of the Remainer element among his detractors. I have little doubt that many of them sniff an opportunity to drag us back into the EU. Indeed, Tobias Ellwood let the cat out of the bag, admitting as much.
For months I have been on the verge of cancelling my Conservative Party membership. I have decided instead to hold fast, so that in a future leadership contest I can do what tiny bit I can to ensure that the likes of Mr Ellwood and Jeremy Hunt are denied the chance to unpick the Brexit that Mr Johnson – for all his failings – helped to achieve. Nigel Price
Wilmslow, Cheshire
SIR – Have we all forgotten the damage Jeremy Hunt did to the NHS in his six years in charge?
He now wants to be prime minister. God help us all.
Raymond Williams
Chigwell, Essex
SIR – How many of the 148 Honourable Members who voted against the Prime Minister are Remainers who never accepted the result of the referendum, hate him for achieving Brexit and know that he stands between them and their cherished return to the EU?
Ian D Small
West Chiltington, West Sussex
SIR – The Prime Minister is frequently accused of lacking convictions. My concern is that, if he has any, they are not the ones for which I thought I was voting.
Ron Butcher
Great Dunmow, Essex
SIR – MPS repeatedly state that the electorate voted for Mr Johnson to be the Prime Minister. If MPS fail to understand that the electorate voted for them, we will continue to move towards government by dictatorship, with all the behavioural traits that dictatorships display.
John Bowen
Binfield, Berkshire
SIR – The PM’S memorial? He beat Jeremy Corbyn and saved the country. Professor John Spiers
Twyford, West Sussex
SIR – The idea that after the 2024 general election a government could be cobbled together with a dull Camden lawyer and a storm-force Skye wind farm as prime minister and deputy prime minister must repel most sane voters.
The nightmare of Sir Keir Starmer and Ian Blackford (with strings pulled in Edinburgh), possibly in a wider “rainbow” woke coalition, is as egregious a political situation as anyone could dare imagine.
Charles Foster
Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire
SIR – Boris Johnson stays, but can MPS at least stop government by Mrs Johnson and her barmy green friends? CP Fish
Chippenham, Wiltshire
SIR – Boris Johnson’s problem is not that he has been “trying to steer a middle road between former Laboursupporting Red Wall voters and core Tories in the shires” (Leading Article, June 7).
Both these groups tend to be socially conservative, pro-brexit, suspicious of the one-sided and doctrinaire green activism that is currently helping to push up prices, and impatient of woke virtue-signalling.
The problem is that he has been reaching out to the opposite constituency – which is globalist, middle-class and largely metropolitan, even if it does include geographically tiny outposts in the regions.
This constituency is, of course, Mr Johnson’s own natural milieu. Andrew Bowyer
Wigan, Lancashire
SIR – I want Boris Johnson to go – not because of partygate but because of the toxic policies he’s following. The ruinous net-zero agenda and the crackpot energy policy, green levies and ban on fracking that go with it, combined with high taxation, are all taking a wrecking ball to our way of life. He has changed tack before so he may do so again, but I don’t see it.
The candidates lining up to replace him seem tarred with the same brush, leaving Conservatives disfranchised and an economy heading for the rocks. Neil NH Bailey
Stockport, Cheshire
SIR – The vote by Conservative MPS reflects the view in the country. Partygate was a smokescreen behind which MPS showed their concern at the Government’s direction of travel.
Both MPS and Conservative voters wonder why none of the policies in the Conservative manifesto have been implemented. If Mr Johnson is to survive as PM there are obvious things he needs to do.
1 Complete the exit from the EU, getting rid of the Northern Ireland Protocol.
2 Stop the National Insurance rise and reduce taxes, to encourage investment. 3 Get rid of the net-zero target and use all the facilities we have to reduce energy costs.
4 Erase wokery from the public services and get civil servants back in their offices.
5 Reform the NHS.
These are basic Conservative policies, and if the Government is seen to be acting to put them into practice it will win an election in 2024, whether Mr Johnson is still PM or not.
George Kelly
Buckingham
SIR – The philosopher Roger Scruton teaches us how to live as a Conservative. I highly recommend his teaching and pray for a renaissance in the Conservative Party.
Monday night was a missed opportunity. What MPS have failed to do, the electorate will do most cruelly. Richard Robinson
Petersfield, Hampshire
SIR – Can we voters please have a vote of no confidence in Tory MPS who seem determined to prevent a future Conservative success at the next general election by their continual whingeing about Boris Johnson?
If not, can someone please start a new political party that I might feel able to vote for? I would not vote for a Tory party led by Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt or Tom Tugendhat, and could not bring myself to vote for Labour or the Liberal Democrats (whom I regard as anything but liberal or democratic).
Amanda Dingle
Swindon, Wiltshire
SIR – Why did the BBC feel the need to anchor the 10 o’clock news on Monday with Huw Edwards standing outside No10 competing to be heard with a noisy demonstration, simply to report the outcome of the vote of confidence?
It achieved nothing that it could not have done from the comfort of the studio but with less distraction.
Paul Reed
Stirling
SIR – On July 25 2019 you published a letter of mine stating that I would always check to see whether a future employee had cleaned their shoes.
It saddens me to say that, in the case of Boris Johnson, my instincts were correct.
Mick Kelly
Salisbury, Wiltshire