Boris Johnson will face a vote of confidence on Monday
If 180 Conservative lawmakers — a simple majority — vote against Johnson, he will cease to be leader of the governing Conservative Party and will be forced from office, less than three years after winning a general election in a landslide.
If Johnson wins the vote, he will remain both as leader of the party and as Prime Minister.
A Downing Street spokesperson said Monday that Johnson “welcomes the opportunity to make his case to MPs.”
“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,” the spokesperson said, adding that Johnson will “remind [the MPs] that when they’re united and focused on the issues that matter to voters there is no more formidable political force.”
Johnson will address the 1922 Committee personally ahead of the vote, Downing Street added.
While the vote is confidential, a number of Conservative MPs have publicly voiced their opposition to the Prime Minister.
“Having been trusted with power, Conservative MPs know in our hearts we are not giving the British people the leadership they deserve,” Hunt wrote on Twitter. “We are not offering the integrity, competence and vision necessary to unleash the enormous potential of our country.”
Another Conservative MP, Jesse Norman, told Johnson that his remaining in office “not only insults the electorate… it makes a decisive change of government at the next election much more likely.”
Norman, who represents the Hereford and South Herefordshire constituency, released his letter of no confidence just moments before the vote was announced on Monday.
While he said the Prime Minister’s response to the Sue Gray report was “grotesque,” most of his letter focused on Johnson’s other policies, including the government’s new policy of sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda, which Norman called “ugly, likely to be counterproductive and of doubtful legality.”
Conservative MP John Penrose quit his role as the UK government’s anti-corruption tsar on Monday, claiming that Johnson had broken the government’s ministerial code and quoting the Sue Gray report which highlighted “failures of leadership and judgment” inside Downing Street.
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