Boris Johnson says no-confidence vote win ‘decisive’ despite mass Tory rebellion
Boris Johnson could face a second confidence ballot on his leadership within six months, a senior Tory who voted against him last night has said.
Tobias Ellwood, chair of the Commons defence committee, said heads of the powerful 1992 Committee of backbench Tory MPs are looking at changing the rules.
At present, any leader who wins a confidence vote can not be challenged for another 12 months.
When asked if the rules could be changed so that another vote could take place before then, he told Sky News. “I understand that’s what the 1922 Committee are looking at, deliberately for this reason.
“Because if we’re going to have that stay of execution, we are now going to recognise the democratic outcome and support the prime minister then let’s give the prime minister time to improve.”
He added: “But, methods can be made, the system can be adjusted to mean the current rule of allowing a prime minister an entire year would be changed.”
Ukraine’s Zelensky ‘very happy’ PM survived confidence vote
The president of war torn Ukraine has said he was “very happ”’ that prime minister Boris Johnson survived the vote of confidence on Monday night.
Speaking during an online event hosted by FT Live, Volodymyr Zelensky said: “I’m glad we haven’t lost a very important ally, this is great news.”
Opinion: ‘The Commons is in the gutter thanks to Boris Johnson – it’s time to clean house’
After last night’s no-confidence vote, Conservative MPs now face another choice, writes deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner. Will they today back a set of independent recommendations to strengthen standards in public life or instead turn their backs on them to save the skin of a doomed prime minister?
Labour will be forcing a vote in the Commons today to clean up politics. Our motion follows Boris Johnson’s much-criticised rewriting of the ministerial code as he faces investigation over whether or not he deliberately misled parliament.
In the very week Sue Gray’s report was published, the prime minister airbrushed the words integrity, honesty, accountability and transparency from his own foreword to the code. His attempt to rig the rules, however, went further. The consensus among experts and watchdogs alike is that the net effect of the prime minister’s changes was to weaken standards and concentrate power in his own hands.
PM won by a smaller margin than you think
If just 32 Conservative MPs had changed their minds and voted against Johnson, instead of for, he would have been ousted, writes Kit Yates.
Read Kit’s full piece here:
Lord David Frost opposes tax rise to fund social care
Lord David Frost has said he opposes the tax rises planned by the government to help pay for social care, and believes most of the money saved will not go towards improving the system anyway.
When asked whether the government should reverse the national insurance rise, he told BBC Radio 4’s World At One: “Yes – I think that all tax rises that we brought in and the corporation tax ones that are due to come in soon ought to be reversed.
“It is not Conservative to be raising taxes, and it is undermining growth and prosperity.
Frost, a former trade negotiator and cabinet minister, quite the government last year having failed to find a solution to Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol
” height=”726″ width=”982″ layout=”responsive” class=”i-amphtml-layout-responsive i-amphtml-layout-size-defined” i-amphtml-layout=”responsive”> Frost, a former trade negotiator and cabinet minister, quite the government last year having failed to find a solution to Brexit’s Northern Ireland protocol
“We need to improve productivity and investment, and not weaken it.”
Lord Frost added: “I don’t think it’s a particularly good solution to the social care problem, and I don’t think much of the money will end up going to it anyway.
“I think the choice at the moment is, do we prioritise the deficit or the debt or do we prioritise growth and getting the economy going again, and I think for the time being we should be prioritising growth.”
Labour dismisses Javid’s NHS ‘Blockbuster’ comments
Labour has dismissed comments by health secretary Sajid Javid suggesting that the NHS is a “Blockbuster healthcare system in the age of Netflix”.
Asked about Javid’s comments on Tuesday, Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, told an audience at the Institute for Government: “So what?”
Mr Streeting said: “I think it’s slightly absurd that 12 years into a government we have government ministers who talk in the biggest generalities without plans to deliver anything.”
He added: “We have have a government that is not governing and doesn’t have answers. It just has generalities.”
Who should replace Boris Johnson?
Boris Johnson may have narrowly won last night’s confidence vote, but questions about his leadership look set to continue.
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary and Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, are among some of the names being touted as potential successors if and when the prime minister is ousted.
Who would you like to see as the next prime minister? Have your say in our poll, which can be found at the bottom of the article below:
What Boris Johnson can do to save his premiership
After the confidence vote, the ball is in the prime minister’s court,says Sean O’Grady.
Read Sean’s full piece here:
We need to get behind government now, rebel MP says
A Tory rebel who voted against Boris Johnson in last night’s confidence vote says he accepts the outcome of the ballot and that it is time for him and colleagues to “get behind the government”.
Nigel Mills, the MP for Amber Valley, BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme: “I voted against the prime minister yesterday and I wanted to see a change made, but I accept the result that my colleagues by a majority over 60 wanted to keep the prime minister – effectively saying we should forgive the indiscretions of the lockdown period and move on.
“So that I think is the right approach now for the party, the government and the country.
“We’ve got a lot of serious crises that need tackling, we should get behind the Government to do that.”
He added: “It was a binary vote, it was an issue of: can we accept and forgive the conduct that happened – that I personally thought was unacceptable – or do we make a change?
“We’ve chosen to forgive and move on, we now need to make the case for the country that they need to do the same. It’s not obviously what I wanted to happen, but that is the decision that has been made.”
Boris Johnson is Labour’s greatest asset – why not sit back and enjoy the show?
We are now approaching peak Johnson, the period for which the Owen Paterson affair, Partygate and the cost of living crisis were mere preludes, writes Sean O’Grady.
Read Sean’s full piece here:
Labour to force Parliament vote on ‘cleaning up’ politics
Labour will be forcing a vote in Parliament today on the need “clean up” politics in the wake of Boris Johnson surviving a vote of no confidence in his leadership last night.
The party’s motion, which follows a damning report into the partygate scandal, also calls on the government to accept recommendations made last year by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner told MPs in the Commons that Mr Johnson has been “rigging the rules that he himself is under investigation for breaching” and has “debased the principles of public life before our very eyes”.
Senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report into partygate revealed the “rotten culture in the heart of Downing Street,” Ms Rayner said.
You can read her op-ed for the Independent on Labour’s motion here:
