Rishi Sunak looks to have seen off a potential Tory rebellion – at least for now – after the shock resignation of Boris Johnson threatened a new period of instability and infighting within the party.
In an extraordinary resignation statement, the former prime minister attacked the record of Sunak’s government as well as the motives of the Commons Privileges Committee, which is expected to formally rule that Johnson lied to Parliament over Partygate.
Choosing to walk before he was likely to be forced out, Johnson was joined by two of his staunchest political allies, Nigel Adams and Nadine Dorries. They also announced their intention to immediately stand down as MPs after their elevation to the House of Lords was blocked.
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Johnson’s allies told The Times on Monday the former prime minister believed he had been given assurances by Sunak that the MPs would be given their peerages. But firing back, Sunak told reporters at the opening of London Tech Week: “Boris Johnson asked me to do something that I wasn’t prepared to do, because I didn’t think it was right.”
The resignations of Johnson, Dorries and Adams as MPs will trigger simultaneous by-elections and could see Sunak become “the first prime minister to lose three parliamentary seats in a day”, said The Telegraph.
What did the papers say?
Johnson’s resignation “triggered a weekend of vicious blue-on-blue bloodletting”, said Politico’s London Playbook. However, suggestions that more MPs might follow Dorries and Adams by quitting their seats seem to have been “tamped down”.
The Daily Mail’s political editor Jason Groves reported that Tory whips spent the weekend frantically calling potential rebels, telling Sunak on Sunday that the backlash over Johnson’s shock departure was “coming under control amid calls for the party to unite to keep Labour out of Number 10”.
“For the Tories, this is yet another moment of truth” said an editorial in The Sunday Times. “Most of its MPs have given up on Johnson, but many ordinary members cling to him because of his election-winning record, including his welcome defeat of Jeremy Corbyn.” Yet a revival of the “Johnson soap opera only benefits Starmer”.
Yes, agreed The Sun, “Bojo has every reason to feel bitter about the way he was stitched up. And his supporters may justifiably feel aggrieved on his behalf. But to seek revenge in a pyrotechnical fit of rage will only leave all sides of their party burned.
“An eye for an eye will leave the whole party blinded to the real danger and that is an easy ride for Labour at the next election.”
What next?
Sunak now has just weeks to prepare for the three by-elections – “placed like landmines beneath his administration by his indignant predecessor”, said the Financial Times. They will be “the first major test of Sunak’s leadership”, said the paper, “at a time when the mood in the party is already unsettled and Labour enjoys a 15-point lead in the opinion polls”.
Keen to avoid entering the summer recess with multiple by-elections hanging over them, votes are expected to be announced for Thursday 13 July. Constituency level polling by Focaldata and Best for Britain for The Telegraph show straightforward wins for Labour in Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat and Selby and Ainsty, the former constituency of Adams. In Dorries’s Mid Bedfordshire, polling shows the Conservative lead over second-placed Labour falling from 38 percentage points in 2019 to 2.5.
As for Johnson, “some in the party think he is finished”, said BBC political editor Chris Mason. “Others, far from it.”
Speaking to Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps claimed that “the world has moved on”, but Mason’s view is that Johnson is “not likely to vanish into obscurity”.
Speculation that he may immediately seek a return to Parliament by standing in the seat vacated by Dorries – who won a majority of almost 25,000 in 2019 – has been shot down by senior Conservatives. One “Tory insider” told the i news site that this could cause “world war three between the local association and Tory HQ”.
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage even hinted on his GB News show on Sunday that he would be open to teaming up with Johnson to form a new political party.
While talk of a Brexit “dream team” may provoke fear within the Conservatives as well as Labour as it looks to woo back red wall voters, the chances are “highly unlikely”, said the Daily Express’s political editor David Maddox. This is because it would require trying to fit “vast egos who cannot stand leadership rivals in the same room”.
