Boris Johnson resigns after party revolt

Scandal-ridden Boris Johnson yesterday announced he would quit as British prime minister after he dramatically lost the support of his ministers and most Conservative lawmakers, but said he would stay on until his successor was chosen.

Bowing to the inevitable as more than 50 ministers quit and lawmakers said he must go, an isolated and powerless Johnson acknowledged that "no one is remotely indispensable" and accepted that it was the "will of the parliamentary Conservative party" that he should leave No 10.

"It is clearly the will of the parliamentary Conservative party that there should be a new leader of that party, and therefore a new prime minister," Johnson said outside 10 Downing Street.

Joined by his wife, Carrie, and a number of Tory supporters, Johnson said he was "sad to be giving up the best job in the world" and claimed it was "eccentric" to change governments at this stage. "I regret not to have been successful in those arguments," he said.

"When the herd moves, it moves," he said, in a reference to the cabinet and MPs moving against him, while paying tribute to the "brilliant Darwinian system" that caused his downfall. "Them's the breaks," he added. The prime minister said he had "appointed a cabinet to serve, as I will, until a new leader is in place", pointing to a sense of duty and obligation to the public.

However, senior Conservative MPs are pushing back against the idea that Johnson should be allowed to stay in office for any longer and want to see an interim leader in place, such as Dominic Raab. Labour also said it would force a confidence vote on the prime minister unless he stepped down from No 10 in short order.

"It was a short and bizarre resignation speech which didn't mention the word resign or resignation once. There was no apology, no contrition," Conservative lawmaker Andrew Bridgen said.

The Conservative leadership election will take place over the summer and the victor will replace Johnson by the party's annual conference in early October, the BBC and others reported.

The process could take weeks or months. Details of the process will be announced next week, reports Reuters.

A snap YouGov poll found that defence minister Ben Wallace was the favourite among Conservative Party members to replace Johnson, followed by junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt and former finance minister Rishi Sunak.

Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said he would call a parliamentary confidence vote if the Conservatives did not remove Johnson at once.

The crisis comes as Britons are facing the tightest squeeze on their finances in decades, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with soaring inflation, and the economy forecast to be the weakest among major nations in 2023 apart from Russia.

Support drained away from Johnson as more than 50 ministers and government aides resigned in a rolling walkout, while a slew of once supportive backbenchers declared no confidence in his leadership.

The revolt began on Tuesday evening with the resignations of Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak as health secretary and chancellor respectively.

His exit follows three years of scandals, including fury over his handling of harassment allegations against Pincher, the deputy chief whip; a police fine over lockdown parties in Downing Street, attempts to change the standards system, and accusations of breaking international law.

Johnson became prime minister in 2019, taking over from Theresa May with a promise to "get Brexit done". After winning an 80-seat majority in a general election in December 2019, and taking the UK out of the EU, the prime minister had his eye on multiple terms in No 10.

It also follows years of internal division sparked by the narrow 2016 vote to leave the European Union, and threats to the make-up of the United Kingdom itself with demands for another Scottish independence referendum, the second in a decade.

Initially, Johnson refused to go and seemed set to dig in, sacking Michael Gove - a member of his top ministerial team who was one of the first to tell him he needed to resign - in a bid to reassert his authority.

But by yesterday morning as a slew of resignations poured in, it became clear his position was untenable.

Some of those that remained in post, including Wallace, had said they were only doing so because they had an obligation to keep the country safe.

Once it was clear he was standing down, Johnson began appointing ministers to vacant posts.

"It is our duty now to make sure the people of this country have a functioning government," Michael Ellis, a minister in the Cabinet Office department which oversees the running of government, told parliament.