How Boris Johnson lost the support of his party

Boris Johnson has announced his resignation outside Downing Street this afternoon.

It followed an “extraordinary standoff with his cabinet” that ended after newly appointed chancellor Nadhim Zahawi “told him to quit“, The Guardian reported. More than 50 ministers had already walked out, “citing his mishandling of a string of scandals and failure of ethics”, the paper added.

Here is how Johnson lost their support.

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Partygate

Johnson has faced a barrage of criticism from many of his own backbench MPs since allegations of rule-breaking lockdown parties at Downing Street emerged last November.

In May, in a particularly damaging moment for the PM, former cabinet minister and Johnson “loyalist” Angela Leadsom said she thought it was “extremely unlikely” that he had not been aware of the scale of lockdown breaches in Downing Street.

Leadsom – who was backed by Johnson for the party leadership against Theresa May in 2016 – also “suggested that she was considering submitting a letter of no confidence” in him, reported The Times. In a statement to her constituents, the MP for South Northamptonshire said that “the conclusion I have drawn from the Sue Gray report is that there have been unacceptable failings of leadership that cannot be tolerated and are the responsibility of the prime minister”.

More recently, another rebel MP told The Times that Johnson had failed to show genuine contrition for the scandal and that any display of remorse by the PM was “a complete act”.

Johnson’s behaviour would cost the Conservative Party at the next election, according to the unnamed MP. “The only question is whether you swap him out for somebody else who is a bit of an unknown, go through that blood-letting, and you’re as likely or possibly more likely to lose,” the insider added. “But you can lose with a bit of honour if you choose the right person?”

Questions over electability

Johnson has enjoyed a reputation as an almost unsurpassed vote winner. But questions had also been voiced increasingly about whether he could successfully lead the Tory party to victory at the next general election.

Last month, Johnson suffered what The Mirror described as a “brutal double by-election defeat”, in Wakefield and in Tiverton and Honiton. Voters “turned their back on the Tories”, with Labour taking back the Red Wall northern seat and the Lib Dems overturning a 24,000 majority in the southern seat.

A document dubbed the “dossier of doom” by the Daily Mail was also circulated among backbench MPs that starkly questioned Johnson’s electoral prospects. The dossier – thought to have been put together by his Conservative opponents – said that the PM was “no longer an electoral asset” and would “lead the party to a substantial defeat in 2024”.

The booing of Johnson outside St Paul’s Cathedral during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations “tells us nothing the data does not”, the dossier continued. No social group trusted Johnson, with “even 55% of current Conservatives calling him untrustworthy, against only 25% saying he is trustworthy”.

Johnson’s personal approval ratings have continued to plummet since then. A YouGov poll published earlier this morning found that 59% of Conservative party members wanted Johnson to resign.

Lack of political purpose

Allies have claimed that Johnson “‘gets the big calls right’, but critics of his economic, energy and immigration policies disagree”, wrote former Downing Street chief of staff Nick Timothy in The Telegraph last month. “We are told there are no good candidates to replace him, which, if true, would be a damning indictment of the cabinet Johnson has appointed.”

While Johnson’s supporters have argued that he must be allowed to “get on with the project”, Timothy insisted that “we must also ask if there really is a project, beyond keeping the PM in office”. Johnson made promises of “active government, public spending, and fighting crime and cutting immigration”, but less than three years on from his election win, “any real sense of purpose” has all but “disappeared”.

The “vacuum at the top of government is not only ethical but political”, Timothy added.

Pincher affair

For months, Johnson “wriggled out of one scandal after another”, but he was eventually “brought down by his own dishonesty”, said The Economist. The “catalyst” in the PM’s “clownfall” was his handling of the various allegations against his deputy chief whip Chris Pincher, who was accused last week of groping two men.

No. 10 “tied itself in knots over the matter, frequently changing its story on whether or not the PM had been made aware of the allegations or not”, said Emily Ferguson at the i news site.

The row proved to be the breaking point for some of his cabinet ministers. On Tuesday night, Sajid Javid resigned as health secretary and was swiftly followed out the door by chancellor Rishi Sunak and dozens of junior ministers.

The “executive exodus” was “so overwhelming that the BBC featured a ticker with a running total to keep up”, noted The Economist. “In the end the government had so many vacancies that it could no longer function.”