British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing a vote of confidence in his leadership Monday evening as the Partygate scandal reaches its climax.
The ruling U.K. Conservative Party erupted into open civil war after Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, confirmed he had received sufficient letters of no confidence — from at least 15 percent of current Conservative MPs — to trigger the vote.
The secret ballot of all 359 Conservative MPs got underway at 6 p.m. London time, with a result due to be announced by Brady around three hours later. If Johnson loses, a leadership contest will immediately be launched to choose the next U.K. prime minister.
In a last-minute plea to his MPs ahead of the vote, Johnson insisted he can “rebuild trust” with voters after a scandal-hit 2022.
“There have been bumpy times before,” he told a closed-doors meeting of his party in Westminster. “With the right ideas we can get the country through a difficult time.”
Johnson’s former leadership rival Jeremy Hunt — the bookies’ favorite to succeed him if he loses — had been first out of the blocks Monday with an apparent leadership bid, criticizing the prime minister in a series of tweets and warning fellow Tory MPs of looming disaster in the next general election, currently scheduled for May 2024.
“Today’s decision is change or lose,” Hunt wrote. “I will be voting for change.”
But Hunt in turn faced stinging criticism from a close Johnson ally and serving Cabinet minister, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, who attacked his own record in government during six years as U.K. health secretary.
“Your pandemic preparation during six years as health secretary was found wanting and inadequate,” Dorries told Hunt on Twitter. “Your duplicity right now in destabilising the party and country to serve your own personal ambition, more so.”
Another closely-watched leadership hopeful, U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, was also quick to tweet her support for the prime minister.
“The prime minister has my 100 percent backing in today’s vote, and I strongly encourage colleagues to support him,” Truss wrote.
Johnson has faced a growing backlash from his own MPs and the general public over the so-called Partygate scandal — when parties and gatherings were held by government and Conservative Party staff during the COVID lockdown — which has engulfed his premiership for the past eight months.
On Monday his anti-corruption czar John Penrose became the latest member of his government to resign in protest at Johnson’s actions, stating it was “clear” Johnson had broken the written code which governs ministerial conduct.
“That’s a resigning matter for me, and it should be for the PM too,” Penrose wrote.
Brady said he had notified Johnson on Sunday that the threshold of no-confidence letters had been reached, adding in an address to the press that “we agreed that a vote should happen as soon as it could reasonably take place.” Brady indicated that some of his colleagues had wanted to wait until the end of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee — celebrated across the U.K. over the long weekend — to send in their letters of no confidence.
Johnson needs the backing of 180 of his MPs to win the confidence vote — a bar he is more likely to pass than not. There are between 160 and 170 MPs on the government payroll, according to a tally by the Institute for Government.
A statement from Downing Street described the vote as an opportunity for Johnson to end the sparring over the Partygate scandal.
“Tonight is a chance to end months of speculation and allow the government to draw a line and move on, delivering on the people’s priorities,” a No. 10 spokesperson said. “The PM welcomes the opportunity to make his case to MPs and will remind them that when they’re united and focused on the issues that matter to voters there is no more formidable political force.”
Conservative Party rules state that should a leader survive a confidence vote, a second vote cannot then be held for at least 12 months — suggesting Johnson would be safe until June 2023. However in a potentially ominous sign for the prime minister, Brady noted that “technically, it’s possible for rules to be changed.”