Boris Johnson resigns as the British Prime Minister

Europe, News July 7, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on July 7 that he will be stepping down as the Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party due to a growing list of Conservative officials resigning to record their protest against his premiership.

There are calls for a caretaker prime minister but there is no hard rule on the interim leader as the UK does not have a written constitution.

The UK government had been in hot water after several scandals surfaced in the past few months highlighting the administrative mismanagement of the Prime Minister’s office. Boris Johnson had been facing a high level of hostility and disapproval from his own party despite surviving the no-confidence vote that took place last month.

It all started with the ‘Partygate’ scandal when the British Prime Minister was fined by the police for holding 16 alcohol-fueled gatherings attended and hosted by Johnson and his staff in 2020 and 2021 at a time when people in the United Kingdom were under strict lockdown due to the Covid-19 restrictions imposed by Johnson’s Conservative government.

A senior civil servant Sue Gray’s probed into the scandal and released a report that puts the responsibility of negligence on the top government officials including the Prime Minister. Johnson also came under the fire for not doing enough to tackle a cost-of-living crisis, with many Britons struggling to cope with rising fuel and food prices. Several reports have indicated that the country is heading towards a sharp slowdown or possibly a recession.

The Partygate scandal along with several other factors lead to a lot of backlash from his own party resulting in an inter-party no-confidence movement against Boris Johnson at the start of June 2022. He survived the no-confidence movement with a 59% majority.

^{British Prime Minister Johnson survived the no-confidence movement with the backing of 211 MPs, while 148 MPs voted in favor of the movement. (Image Credit: Stefan Rousseau/Press Association, via Associated Press)}

In order to mark their disapproval against the Prime Minister, several of Johnson’s ministers, officials, advisors, and secretaries resigned to mark their protest against his leadership. An exodus of ministers and officials in just 24 hours has mounted to 38.

Johnson also faced an hours-long grilling from the chairs of the House of Commons. The list of resigning ministers and officials keeps growing that also including several of the key ministries such as Finance Minister Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid. Several secretaries and high-level government officials have also resigned from their positions to record their protest against the Prime Minister.

Initially brushing off the calls for his resignation, Johnson told the Members of Parliament that would ‘keep going’. During his speech at the parliament session, he stated, “Frankly, the job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances when you have been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going and that’s what I’m going to do.”

However, in the wake administrative crisis that his government is facing due to the mass resignation spree, Boris Johnson announced that he would be stepping down from the Prime Minister’s seat.

UK’s main opposition party, the Labour party defeated the Conservatives in another by-election in northern England on the same day adding to the disapproval of Johnson’s party members on his leadership.

I want to thank you, the British public, for the immense privilege of serving you as Prime Minister.

I want you to know that from now until my successor is in place, your interests will be served and the government of the country will be carried on.https://t.co/T4kJoxmZ8q pic.twitter.com/Hn4rDUV319
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) July 7, 2022