By Karla Adam and William Booth
Thursday July 7, 2022
LONDON — Boris Johnson stepped down as leader of the
Conservative Party on Thursday but will continue to serve as prime minister
until his successor is chosen, following an avalanche of resignations within
his cabinet that eroded his authority and paralyzed the British government.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters
and onlookers at the lectern outside 10 Downing Street, Johnson said, “It is
clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should
be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister.”
“I’ve appointed a cabinet to serve,
as I will, until a new leader is in place,” he said. That process could take at
least six weeks or longer. The timetable will be announced next week.
Johnson did not become emotional,
nor did he apologize for the behavior and actions that brought the 58-year-old
politician to this low point.
Instead, he blamed his party for
his downfall, comparing his fellow lawmakers to stampeding animals.
“As we have seen at Westminster …
when the herd moves, it moves. And my friends, in politics, no one is remotely
indispensable,” Johnson said.
He paid tribute to his wife,
Carrie, who was watching his speech with their young daughter in her arms.
“I know there are many people who
are relieved, and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed. I want you
to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them’s the
breaks,” Johnson said.
Earlier on Thursday, Johnson agreed
to resign as leader of the Conservative Party but could remain in office until
it can pick a new prime minister. There would be no general election.
There was immediate and fierce
pushback to that idea from some lawmakers and party grandees who warned that
Johnson was soiling the Conservative Party brand and that he was too damaged to
stay in office through the summer.
Johnson’s former top aide and now chief critic, who helped
his boss win the Brexit referendum and get elected, warned that the prime
minister needed to go now. In a tweet, he urged the Conservative Party to
“Evict TODAY or he’ll cause CARNAGE.”
Dominic Cummings said Johnson even
now is “playing for time” and will try to stay on if he’s allowed to remain in
office until the fall. “He doesn’t think it’s over,” he said, speculating that
Johnson is plotting and thinking, “ ‘I can still get out of this, I got a
mandate, members love me, get to September.’ ”
As the world watched the British
government unravel, the defense secretary, Ben Wallace, stepped forward to
assure Britons that they were being protected. Wallace tweeted: “A number National
Security Ministers are directly involved in authorising, on a daily basis,
operations to defend the UK & its citizens.”
Wallace added that “a number of us
have an obligation to keep this country safe, no matter who is PM.”
Keir Starmer, leader of the
opposition Labour Party, told the BBC that Johnson “needs to go completely,
none of this nonsense about clinging on.”
By midday, Johnson was appointing
new members to his Cabinet to replace those who had resigned. He is doing this
to keep government functioning — but also perhaps to bolster his own position.
Johnson is not the first
Conservative leader to have been shoved aside by his party, which is famous for
ditching its leaders quickly when they are no longer assets. Even Winston
Churchill resigned — after being given a gentle push — as his health declined
in his later years.
Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May,
was forced out after she was unable to get her Brexit deal through Parliament
following opposition within her party, including from Johnson. May managed just
over three years in office — Johnson has ruled for just under three years.
Johnson woke up Thursday morning in
Downing Street, his office and residence, to another wave of resignations by
government officials and party members declaring that the embattled prime
minister must step down immediately — for the sake not only of his Conservative
Party but for the country.
Before the breakfast shows on
television were over, there were 53 resignations, including four Cabinet
ministers in just two days. Many of the letters included brutal assessments of
Johnson’s tenure and critiques of his honesty. Some pleaded with him to go.
Nadhim Zahawi, who on Tuesday was
appointed chancellor, the second-most important job in government, turned on
Johnson on Thursday and told him to step down. He tweeted: “Prime Minister:
this is not sustainable and it will only get worse: for you, for the
Conservative Party and most importantly of all the country. You must do the
right thing and go now.”
Johnson had until now refused to
bow to pressure to resign, saying that he has a 14-million-vote mandate from
the British people who cast their ballots for him and his party in the last
general election, in 2019.
But his authority has evaporated
over the past 48 hours, with longtime colleagues and allies telling him to go —
resignations seemed to be landing every few minutes.
There were so many that it became
unclear whether Johnson and his aides could fill the spots quickly enough to
keep the government going. Ministers in charge of security, the courts,
technology, education, finance, Northern Ireland and science have all left
their jobs.
Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis was among those who
resigned from his position in the Cabinet on Thursday morning. He said that the
British government requires “honesty, integrity and mutual respect” and that it
is “now past the point of no return.”
Damian Hinds, the departing
security minister, told Johnson that “it shouldn’t take the resignation of
dozens of colleagues, but for our country, and trust in our democracy, we must
have a change of leadership.”
Some began to make comparisons to
former U.S. president Donald Trump’s attempt to cling to power. Bernard Jenkin,
a Conservative lawmaker and chair of the powerful Liaison Committee, told the
national broadcaster that Johnson “can go with some dignity” or he can be “forced
out like Donald Trump, clinging to power and pretending he’s won the election
when he’s lost.”
Up until Thursday, Johnson had
shrugged off calls for him to go. At a fiery session of the weekly Prime
Minister’s Questions, he said: “Frankly, the job of a prime minister in
difficult circumstances when you have been handed a colossal mandate is to keep
going, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
The race to succeed Johnson started
Thursday, with Conservative Party members throwing their names into the hat —
even before he had made a statement to the nation about his future. On Thursday
morning, Suella Braverman, who serves in Johnson’s cabinet as the attorney
general, said she would be running in the contest.
The process of picking the new
leader can take several weeks. In Johnson’s case, he became prime minister in
2019 about two months after his predecessor resigned.
Any member of Parliament for the
Conservative party can put themselves forward for the role — provided they
receive nominations from at least two colleagues. The party holds several
rounds of secret-ballot votes to whittle down the field, eliminating the person
with the fewest votes each time. The final two candidates are then put before
the grass-roots members of the party, a group of about 200,000. They then
select the winner.
A poll by YouGov on Thursday found
that Ben Wallace, the defense secretary, was the favorite among Conservative
Party members. Other names included Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, former
chancellor Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.