British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will face a vote of confidence in his leadership of the Conservative Party on Monday.
Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, confirmed in a press release Monday morning that he had received at least the 54 letters of no confidence — from 15 percent of current Conservative MPs — needed to trigger the ballot of Conservative MPs. A vote will take place between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Monday, London time, Brady said.
Brady said in comments to the press on Monday morning that he had notified Johnson on Sunday that the threshold of no-confidence letters had been reached, adding that “we agreed that a vote should happen as soon as it could reasonably take place.” Brady indicated that some of his colleagues had wanted to wait until the end of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee to send in their letters.
Johnson needs the backing of 180 of his Tory MPs to win the confidence vote — a bar he is more likely to pass than not. There are between 160 and 170 MPs on the government payroll, according to a tally by the Institute for Government.
In the more unlikely event Johnson loses the vote, a leadership contest within the party will be launched to choose the next U.K. prime minister.
Ahead of Brady’s announcement Monday, former Treasury Minister Jesse Norman tweeted that after supporting Johnson for 15 years, including during his time as London mayor, he could no longer do so.
In an excoriating letter addressed to the prime minister, Norman accused Johnson of “presiding over a culture of casual law-breaking at 10 Downing Street in relation to Covid.”
