British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday garnered enough support from his Conservative Party to survive a no-confidence vote, after a chain of scandals that have left the party’s standing in disarray.
Having a reputation for surviving scandals, the Brexit leader once again wrestled with scandalous currents to maintain his grip on power, after reports that he and his staff repeatedly held wild parties that violated the COVID-19 restrictions they imposed on others surfaced.
Although support among his fellow Conservative lawmakers has declined considerably, with many of them expressing concern about his judgement, Johnson still won the backing of 211 out of 359 Conservative lawmakers in a secret ballot, a figure more than the minimum required to remain in power. Johnson considered it a “convincing” win and called for unity among the party members.
“What it means is that as a government we can move on and focus on stuff that I think really matters to people,” Johnson said.
With no obvious front-runner to succeed him, many experts had predicted Johnson would surmount the challenge. However, 148 MPs is a worrying number and could be an indication of division in the Conservative party, coming just three years after he led the party to its biggest election victory in decades. His winning margin was however less than the number achieved by his predecessor, Theresa May, in a similar vote back in December 2018.
Since his emergence as Prime Minister in 2019, Boris Johnson has led Britain out of the European Union and a pandemic, both of which threatened the social and economic fabric of the nation. This vote comes at a time when Johnson’s government is burdened with alarming energy and food inflation.
