#Johnson #crisis #Tories #slump #general #vote
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed on Friday to listen and learn but refused to resign after his Conservatives suffered crushing defeats in two general elections and a staunch ally resigned.
In a pointed resignation letter to Johnson, party leader and cabinet member Oliver Dowden said “someone” must be to blame for “recent events”.
It was widely seen as a reference to “Partygate” and other scandals that have dogged the Prime Minister, who narrowly survived a no-confidence vote among Tory MPs this month.
But Johnson called the electoral setbacks a mid-term blues for the Conservatives as Britain grapples with double-digit inflation not seen since the 1970s, rising poverty and strikes.
“I’m not going to pretend these are brilliant results. We have to listen. We have to learn,” Johnson told reporters in Rwanda, where he is attending a Commonwealth summit.
“But I really, really don’t think the way into British politics is to focus on issues of personalities, whether it’s mine or someone else’s,” he added.
“The way forward is to make people make the case for the changes and improvements that we are delivering. And that’s what I was elected for.”
After his visit to Rwanda, Johnson travels to Germany and then Spain for G7 and NATO summits. He won’t be returning to the UK until late next week and is facing some calls for the trip to be cut short to deal with the aftermath of the by-election.
If repeated in the next general election, due in 2024, the two results would expose the Conservatives to a historic national defeat.
– ‘pincer movement’ –
In the constituencies of Tiverton and Honiton in south-west England, the party saw its majority in the 2019 general election of more than 24,000 votes crushed by the centrist Liberal Democrats in what was one of the biggest surprises in UK electoral history.
The main Labor opposition retook the Wakefield parliamentary seat in northern England, another sign of their resurgence after Johnson triumphed in 2019 with a vow to “get Brexit done”.
Since then, the impact of Brexit and the Covid pandemic have worsened the economic picture and opinion polls show widespread disgust at Johnson’s leadership emerging from Downing Street parties to lift the lockdown.
The winning Liberal Democrat candidate, Richard Foord, said voters in Tiverton and Honiton had sent a “shockwave through British politics”.
“It’s time for Boris Johnson to go, now,” he said.
Newly elected Labor MP for Wakefield Simon Lightwood told Johnson: “Your disdain for this country will no longer be tolerated.”
Tony Travers, a politics professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said it was “almost inconceivable” that Johnson would drop out voluntarily.
But the results at opposite ends of England showed a ‘pincer movement’ by Labor and the Liberal Democrats on Tory strongholds. “And that will worry a lot of Conservative MPs,” he told AFP news agency.
– ‘ravens leave the tower’ –
The reasons for the two by-elections were emblematic of Tory troubles.
The former Tiverton and Honiton MP was forced to resign after he was spotted watching pornography on his phone in Parliament.
In Wakefield, the MP resigned after being convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy.
“Porn MP” Neil Parish dismissed Johnson’s attempts to deflect blame after the Tories lost their rural turf in south-west England for the first time since the early 19th century.
“It has become a referendum on Boris Johnson and what is happening nationally,” he told BBC television.
Under current party rules, the prime minister should be safe from another leadership election for 12 months.
But senior MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who sits on the Tory backbencher’s ‘1922 Committee’, hinted the rules could be changing.
Johnson will have to defend himself to the party again in the coming days, he said on BBC radio.
“We will then have to decide in the group whether we think that is a satisfactory statement or whether we should actually take steps to have a new prime minister.”
Dowden was an early supporter of Johnson’s bid to unseat Theresa May as Conservative leader in June 2019.
“His departure is the ravens that leave the Tower of London,” wrote Daniel Finkelstein, a Conservative lord and journalist, in The Times newspaper.
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