An extraordinary YouGov poll on Tuesday found that 69% of Britons polled wanted Johnson to resign. The poll of 3,009 adults found that only 18% wanted it to stay.
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LONDON — UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s leadership hangs in the balance after the resignations of two of his most senior ministers and several other senior officials and ministerial aides in the past 24 hours.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak resigned on Tuesday evening, saying the government must be run “properly, competently and seriously”. Health Secretary Sajid Javid also resigned in protest at Johnson’s leadership, which has been mired in controversy and scandal in recent months.
While a number of senior Tories have called for Johnson to quit, former government Brexit negotiator David Frost has also joined the fray, calling for the prime minister to step down immediately. In a newspaper column on Wednesday, Frost echoed other critics of Johnson, saying flatly that “it’s time for him to go,” adding that “if he stays, he risks taking the party and the government down with him.”
Despite calls for him to resign, the prime minister has shown no signs that he is ready to step down. Last night he reshuffled his ministerial team to fill the posts left vacant by the shock resignations.
Several ministers defended Johnson, expressing their loyalty to him. Among the leading figures remaining in the Cabinet are Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Chances of early elections
For now, the loyalty of senior ministers dampens the immediate prospect of an early election in Britain. For that to happen, Johnson would have to resign or face another confidence vote. Because he only faced such a vote last month, a new challenge would require a rule change to allow another vote within the next 12 months.
“Current party rules stipulate that Johnson cannot face another no-confidence vote until next summer. But the main risk now is that either those rules will be changed to force a new vote or Johnson will be pressured to voluntarily step down,” Alan Monks, an economist at JPMorgan, said in a note on Tuesday evening.
“Events could move very quickly, with the Conservative leadership contest potentially appointing a new prime minister in the next few months – before the party’s annual conference in early October.”
Market response
Sterling fell to a new low since March 2020 on Tuesday as political instability in the UK played out. It will be closely watched to see how the markets react over the next few days.
“There’s paralysis and there’s so much uncertainty about exactly how it’s going to play out,” Ben Emmons, managing director of Global Macro Strategy at Medley Global Advisors, told CNBC on Wednesday.
“The way the markets reacted, somewhat negatively, as sterling and British gilt yields fell, but then they recovered and I think that shows that as much uncertainty as there is around the cabinet and Johnson’s position, it’s not has fallen apart, he still has support,” he said.
“We’re not going to see a snap election, they have to elect a new leader for that to happen, so I think the markets are calming down [the fact that] we will enter a period of some uncertainty, but that uncertainty reflects the status quo, nothing will change in the economy or politics,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
A series of scandals
The latest political upheaval to hit the UK comes after a series of controversies ranging from the ‘partygate’ scandal with Johnson and scores of other government officials found to have broken pandemic lockdown rules to dirty allegations – the latest of which includes Chris Pincher, deputy chief whip of the Conservative Party, responsible for maintaining party discipline.
Pincher resigned and was suspended as a Conservative MP last week following allegations he drunkenly groped two men at a private members’ club. It has since emerged that Johnson appointed him to the role despite being aware of previous allegations of misconduct against him.
Johnson apologized for appointing Pincher as deputy chief whip, but it was too little too late with senior resignations coming just minutes later.
Johnson has faced a number of challenges to his leadership in recent months, as well as calls for him to resign, particularly after a shock vote of confidence and the Conservative Party’s loss of two key by-elections in the past month, as the British public’s faith in its leader wears thin. .
An extraordinary YouGov poll on Tuesday found that 69% of Britons polled wanted Johnson to resign. The poll of 3,009 adults found that only 18% wanted it to stay.
Among Conservative voters polled, 54% said they wanted to see Johnson go, while 33% wanted him to stay, indicating that Johnson has become an unpopular figure for many voters initially attracted to his leadership in 2019 ., when he won a whopping 80-majority in his election bid to “make Brexit happen”.
The leader of Britain’s opposition Labor Party, Keir Starmer, tweeted on Tuesday that “the Tory party is corrupt and changing one man will not fix that. Only a real change of government can give Britain the fresh start it needs”.
Nadhim Zahawi, Britain’s new finance minister, told Sky News on Wednesday that he supported the prime minister and said “the team in government today is the team that will deliver”, but Ed Davey, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, told CNBC that “it is clearly in the national interest for Boris Johnson to go” and that Johnson has been proven to be deceitful in the past.
“Having someone as British Prime Minister who is clearly not telling the truth and who lies on an industrial scale is damaging to our democracy, damaging to Britain’s reputation around the world and damaging to our investment… We need a government that knows what does.”
Johnson has been accused of lying repeatedly during his time in office, although he has consistently denied lying and has denied misleading parliament over the partygate scandal, which is under investigation.
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