‘They are the commas’: Boris Johnson has resigned as UK Prime Minister

LONDON (Reuters) – Scandal-laden Boris Johnson announced on Thursday he would resign as Britain’s prime minister after largely losing the support of his ministers and most Conservative lawmakers, but said he would stay in office until his successor is chosen.

A reclusive and weak Johnson said it was clear that his party wanted someone else in power.

“Today I appointed a government to serve as I will until a new leader takes over,” Johnson said outside his Downing Street office, where his speech was watched by close allies and his wife, Carey.

“I know there will be a lot of people who are relieved and maybe a few who will be disappointed too. And I want you to know how sad I am to give up the best job in the world. But they are the breaks.”

Johnson offered no apologies for the events leading up to his announcement and said his forced departure was “eccentric”.

There was cheers and applause as he began to speak, while boos from some resounded outside the gates of Downing Street.

After days of fighting for his job, Johnson deserts all but a handful of his closest allies after the latest in a string of scandals breaks their willingness to support him.

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An early YouGov poll showed Defense Secretary Ben Wallace was the favorite among Conservative Party members to replace Johnson, followed by junior commerce minister Penny Mordaunt and former finance minister Rishi Sunak.

While Johnson has said he will stay in office, opponents and many in his party have said he should leave immediately and hand his position over to his deputy, Dominic Raab.

Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labor Party, said he would call a parliamentary vote of confidence if the Conservatives did not remove Johnson immediately. Read more

“We cannot continue to cling to this prime minister for months and months to come,” he said.

The crisis comes at a time when the British are facing the heaviest pressure on their finances in decades, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with rising inflation, and the economy is expected to be the weakest among the major countries in 2023 except for Russia.

It also comes after years of internal division sparked by a narrow vote in 2016 to leave the European Union, and threats to the formation of the United Kingdom itself with demands for another Scottish independence referendum, the second in a decade.

Support for Johnson evaporated during one of the most turbulent 24 hours in modern British political history, summed up by the chancellor, Nazim al-Zahawi, who was appointed to the job only on Tuesday, and called on his boss to resign.

Zahawi and other ministers went to Downing Street on Wednesday evening, accompanied by a senior representative of non-governmental lawmakers, to tell Johnson that the game was over.

Initially refusing to go and seeming intent on getting deeper, Johnson fired Michael Gove – a member of his top ministerial team who had been among the first to tell him he needed to resign – in an attempt to reassert his authority.

But by Thursday morning with a plethora of resignations pouring in, it became clear his position was untenable.

“You should do the right thing and go now,” Zahawi wrote on Twitter.

Some of those who remained in office, including Wallace, said they were only doing so because they had an obligation to keep the country safe.

There were so many ministerial resignations that the government was facing paralysis. Despite his imminent departure, Johnson began appointing ministers to vacant positions.

“It is our duty now to make sure that the people of this country have a functioning government,” Michael Ellis, a minister in the Cabinet Office that oversees the running of government, told Parliament.

From folk to desert

An energetic Johnson came to power nearly three years ago, promising to deliver Brexit and save him from the bitter wrangling that followed the 2016 referendum. He ignored fears from some that his narcissism, failure to deal with details and reputation for deception meant he was inappropriate.

Since then, some Conservatives have enthusiastically supported the former journalist and mayor of London while others supported him, despite reservations, because he was able to appeal to parts of the electorate who would normally reject their party.

This was demonstrated in the December 2019 elections. But his administration’s often combative and chaotic approach to governance and a series of scandals have exhausted the goodwill of many of his deputies while opinion polls show he is no longer popular with the general public.

The latest crisis erupted after lawmaker Chris Pincher, who had held a government role in pastoral care, was forced to resign over accusations of groping men in a private club.

Johnson had to apologize after it emerged that he had been briefed that Pincher had been the subject of previous complaints of sexual misconduct prior to his appointment. The prime minister said he forgot.

It came after months of scandals and missteps, including a damning report of noisy parties in his Downing Street home and office that violated COVID-19 lockdown rules and saw him being fined by police for a gathering on his 56th birthday.

There have also been policy shifts, an ominous defense of a lawmaker who broke lobbying rules, and criticism that he has not done enough to tackle inflation, as many Britons struggle to deal with rising fuel and food prices.

In his resignation letter, Johnson highlighted his successes – from completing Brexit to ensuring the fastest launch of a COVID-19 vaccine in Europe. But he said his attempts to convince his colleagues that the change of leader during the outbreak of war in Ukraine and the government’s agenda were unsuccessful.

“I regret that I did not succeed in these arguments,” he said. “And of course, it hurts that I can’t see so many ideas and projects for myself.”

“But as we saw at Westminster, the herd instinct is strong–when the herd moves, it moves, and my friends, in politics no one can be dispensed with.”

Additional reporting by William James, Kylie McClellan, Andrew McCaskill, Alistair Smoot, William Schomberg, Movija M, Farouk Suleiman and Sachin Ravikumar; Writing by Michael Holden and Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Kate Holton, Frank Jack Daniel’s, Toby Chopra and Mark Heinrich

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