Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, finally gave in to political reality on Thursday and announced his retirement as head of the Conservative Party. This sparked a leadership contest to choose a new Tory leader, who will then take over as prime minister.
He declared that he would stay in office until a new Conservative leader was chosen.
“It’s time to start the process of selecting a new leader. And as I will do until a new leader is in place, I have selected a cabinet today “Outside of 10 Downing Street, Johnson stated.
The desire of the parliamentary Conservative party, according to Johnson, is for a new party leader and, consequently, a new prime minister.
Johnson, 58, said he will quit after receiving numerous resignations from his senior staff in displeasure with his leadership, but he would continue serving as prime minister until a successor is selected.
After three turbulent years in office marked by Brexit, the Covid-19 outbreak, and unrelenting debate over his reputation for mendacity, he declared that the schedule for a Tory leadership contest would be revealed the following week.
The winner will succeed Johnson by the time of the party’s annual conference in early October, according to reports from the media and others. The leadership contest will take place over the summer.
He justified continuing to battle to the very end to carry out the mandate he earned in a general election in December 2019 by saying he was “sorry… to be giving up the best job in the world.”
The scandal-plagued Johnson had been fighting for his job for days when the latest in a string of scandals caused all but a small group of his loyalists to turn against him.
The Conservative Party’s deputy chairman, Justin Tomlinson, wrote on Twitter that “his resignation was inevitable.” “We must rapidly come together as a party and concentrate on what is important. There are numerous important issues at hand right now.”
It will now be up to the Conservatives to choose a new leader, a procedure that might take weeks or months.
According to a recent YouGov poll, Rishi Sunak, the former finance minister, junior trade minister Penny Mordaunt, and defense minister Ben Wallace were the top three candidates for Johnson’s replacement among Conservative Party members.
Many argued that because he had lost the support of his party, he ought to go right now and turn things over to Dominic Raab, his deputy.
If the Conservatives do not immediately fire Johnson, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer threatened to seek a vote of confidence in parliament.
We can’t continue with this prime minister hanging on for months and months to come, he continued, so Labour will step up in the national interest and introduce a vote of no confidence.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with skyrocketing prices and the economy projected to be the poorest among major nations outside of Russia in 2023, Britons are under the tightest financial pressure in decades.
