Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, is under tension after losing two parliamentary seats.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson Conservative Party lost two parliamentary seats on Friday, spurring the party’s chairman to resign and renewing hesitations about Britain’s embattled leader’s future.
The losses are one of the Conservatives’ traditional southern heartlands and one in a seat won from Labour in the previous election. This suggests that the electoral coalition Johnson assembled for the 2019 national election is fraying.
After months of controversy over COVID-19 lockdown parties and a growing cost-of-living crisis, Johnson’s transformation from vote winner to electoral liability may prompt legislators to move against him again.
Johnson has resisted huge pressure to resign after being fined for violating lockdown guidelines at his Downing Street office, and he has ruled out resigning if his governing party loses the so-called by-elections.
“True, we’ve had some difficult by-election results… I believe that as a government, I must hear what people have to say” Johnson told reporters following the results.
Boris Johnson is currently in Rwanda attending a Commonwealth meeting.
He survived a vote of confidence by Conservative lawmakers this month, even though 41 percent of his parliamentary colleagues voted to remove him, and he is being investigated by a committee about whether he intentionally misled parliament.
Following the defeats in Tiverton and Honiton in the south and Wakefield in the north, Conservative Party Chairman Oliver Dowden resigned, stating that things needed to change.
“The parliamentary by-elections held yesterday are the latest in a string of disastrous results for our party. Recent events have upset and disappointed our supporters, and I start sharing their disappointment”, Dowden stated this in a letter to Johnson.
“We cannot conduct business as usual. Someone must take responsibility, so I have stated that it would be inappropriate for me to continue in office under such circumstances.”
Several Conservative lawmakers expressed their support for Dowden, declaring he was not to be held responsible for the outcomes in messages that suggested a resurgence of dissidence against Johnson’s leadership.
Although Johnson cannot be questioned with a no-confidence motion for the next year under his party’s rules, lawmakers concerned about their futures may decide to shorten the grace period to force another vote.
Another way Johnson’s cabinet unit of top ministers could be forced out is through a wave of resignations.
The very next national election is set for 2024, but it could be called sooner. The Conservatives were defeated by the centrist Liberal Democrats with a majority of more than 6,000 votes in Tiverton and Honiton, in a deeply Conservative part of southwest England.
The Liberal Democrats claimed it was the largest ever majority overturned in a British parliamentary by-election, raising the prospect of other Conservative lawmakers losing seats in the current party’s southern heartlands.
In his victory speech, having won Lib Dem candidate Richard Foord stated “Johnson should go, and go now.”
The biggest opposition Labour party further defeated the Conservatives in Wakefield, a separate parliamentary seat in northern England.
At the 2019 national election, Johnson led the Conservatives to their largest majority in three decades, earning appreciation from his party for his chances of winning in traditionally Labour-voting areas of northern and central England.
However, Wakefield’s loss may indicate that his ability to win in these areas again in the next national election, predicted in 2024, has been jeopardized.
