BORIS RESIGNS: British PM Johnson Says He Is ‘Immensely Proud’ In Resignation Speech

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation today, marking the end of his time at the top of UK politics.

After resisting calls to step down for nearly two days, Johnson admitted to the world’s media outside No. 10 Downing Street in London that “it is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader and a new prime minister.”

“The process of that should begin now. The timetable should be announced next week,” added Johnson, who went on to thank British voters who propelled the Conservatives to their largest House of Commons majority for nearly four decades in the 2019 general election — a result Johnson had repeatedly cited as he sought to cling to power.

Johnson insisted in his resignation statement that he believed it would be ill-advised to “change governments when we are delivering so much and when we have such a vast mandate and when we are actually only a handful of points behind in the polls.”

“I regret not to have been successful in those arguments and of course, it is painful not to be able to see through so many ideas and projects myself,” he said.

In the end, Johnson was left to acknowledge the political reality that dozens of resignations in the previous 24 hours had left him unable to form a fully functioning government.

“As we have seen at Westminster, the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves,” he said. “And my friends in politics, no one is remotely indispensable and our brilliant Darwinian system will produce another leader, equally committed to taking this country forward through tough times.”

Speaking to his yet-to-be-named replacement as leader of the Conservative Party, who is also expected to replace him as prime minister, Johnson said, “I will give you as much support as I can.”

“And to you, the British public, I know that there will be many people who are relieved and perhaps quite a few who will also be disappointed, and I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them’s the breaks,” he said.

“Above all, I want to thank you, the British public, for the immense privilege you have given me. And from now on until the new prime minister is in place, your interest will be served, and the government of the country will be carried on.”

Ironically, though Johnson stepped down as prime minister Thursday, he could remain in the post for months while Conservatives work out who should replace him. Under party rules, candidates are voted on by members of the parliamentary Conservative Party until just two contenders remain. The final choice will then be made by party members across Britain, with an outcome not likely to be known until early September.

Johnson, 58, bowed to the inevitable after the mass resignation of members of his government, including Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, as a mounting number of Conservative MPs launched excoriating public attacks on his judgment, leadership and allegiance to the truth.

He’ll leave a nation mired in political and economic uncertainty and still showing the strains of his singular though deeply divisive triumph – the U.K.’s exit from the European Union – as it confronts surging inflation, potential recession and the threat of widespread industrial action. The Conservatives trail the main opposition Labour Party in the polls, their past reputation for sleaze revived on Johnson’s watch.

Johnson wants to stay on as caretaker premier until October while the Tories elect a new leader, the people said. Whether or not his party allows him to remain in office for that long, possible successors are already lining up. They include Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and the newly installed chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, as well as Sunak and ex-Health Minister Sajid Javid – who both quit the cabinet on Tuesday. The field is likely to swell.

Johnson’s position became untenable on Wednesday after a day of drama in Westminster that saw him confronted by Tory MPs, told to resign at Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons, and a delegation of cabinet ministers head to Downing Street to tell him his time was up. By today, with even his new appointments calling on him to go, Johnson conceded defeat.

It was a humiliating end to a political career that included his landslide election victory in December 2019 promising to “Get Brexit Done.” That was the high point for a premier who idolized Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, his tenure fatally undermined by the constant drip-feed of scandal that eroded Downing Street’s reputation for probity.

The final straw came with the prime minister’s decision to promote an MP, Chris Pincher, to a senior government role despite knowing of a formal complaint into inappropriate behavior. Johnson then failed to come clean quickly enough on what he knew when Pincher was reported as having erred again last week.

While perhaps not the most lurid revelation in the annals of Westminster scandal, it added to the cumulative sense of a prime minister who flaunted his disregard for the rules. It was compounded by the fact that junior ministers and MPs were fed with erroneous information to repeat before the cameras, making them accessories to the falsehood.

That led to the resignations on Tuesday of two of Johnson’s most senior Cabinet members, Sunak and Javid, with the latter saying he had lost confidence in the prime minister. “We cannot go on like this,” Sunak told the premier.

Wednesday witnessed the departure of a slew of other government officials even as Johnson warned plotting rebel Conservatives he would fight any attempt to oust him, and told parliament that he would “keep going.”

Concerns over Johnson’s leadership had been growing for weeks and recently snowballed. It was only on June 6 that he narrowly survived a confidence vote among Tory MPs.

That was triggered after he became the first sitting prime minister found to have broken the law in office. He was fined by the police in April for attending a 2020 party in Downing Street while the nation was subjected to government-enforced lockdowns aimed at battling the coronavirus. Dozens of his administration’s officials were also sanctioned for their involvement in so-called Partygate.

Johnson marched on undaunted, only to incur the ire of his party again.

Whoever replaces him, by winning a vote of Tory MPs and a subsequent ballot of party members, will inherit an economy buffeted by a cost-of-living crisis as inflation accelerates the most in four decades.

Unrest among workers is already fomenting as rail staff, postal workers, teachers and trial lawyers all declare walkouts or debate doing so, prompting parallels with the 1970s and the era’s mix of runaway prices and work stoppages.

The new leader will also have to repair a fractured party that’s looking tired after 12 years in power and suffered as Johnson’s administration has lurched from one crisis to another. And they’ll have to mend relations with the EU that have been strained to near breaking point by Johnson’s threats to renege on the Brexit agreement he negotiated.

U.S. President Joe Biden has also made clear his concern at Johnson’s bid to dismantle the arrangements that keep Northern Ireland in the bloc’s single market, while creating a customs border with the rest of the U.K. Johnson enjoyed close relations with former President Donald Trump, yet his ties with Biden have been cooler.

A onetime journalist who served as Mayor of London for two terms and also as Foreign Secretary, Johnson never painted himself as whiter than white and indeed used his reputation as something of a rogue to draw public support.

His aspirations to higher office were evident in his decision to break with Prime Minister David Cameron and back Brexit in the 2016 referendum, while his popularity partly accounts for the close vote in favor of leaving the bloc in defiance of the opinion polls.

He went on to goad Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, from the back benches, pressing for a clean break from the EU and opposing her more conciliatory stance in negotiations with Brussels until she, too, was forced out and he took her place in July 2019.

In the election of that year, his Conservatives won a large majority because of Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” messaging and his ability to attract northern English voters who had traditionally preferred Labour.

His successor will need to find ways to rally similar support from the “Red Wall,” especially as Johnson struggled to deliver on his campaign promise to “level up” the British economy. They’ll also have to regain the trust of traditional Tories in rural and southern areas who abandoned the party in droves in favor of the Liberal Democrats at three special elections in little over a year.

The good news for the new resident of 10 Downing Street is no general election is due until 2025.

Johnson’s successes include the rapid rollout of a coronavirus vaccine – the U.K.-developed AstraZeneca shot – even as made headlines for being hospitalized in intensive care during the early days of the pandemic. And he won plaudits for Britain’s military and financial support for Ukraine as it battles Russia, earning praise from President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In the end, though, the sense of scandal prevailed over all else.

As well as “Partygate,” Johnson’s standing was damaged by a botched attempt last year to help Conservative MP Owen Paterson evade an ethics probe. There were also questions over how the refurbishment of the premier’s Downing Street apartment was paid for.

Poor results in local balloting in May followed by stinging defeats in two special elections in June offered evidence to his most staunch supporters that Johnson was turning from a vote winner to an electoral liability.

The scandal that ultimately toppled Johnson was the revelation that he’d known of allegations about Pincher’s behavior two years before promoting him. That was exacerbated by Downing Street’s changing position about exactly what Johnson knew and when.

Colleagues eventually grew tired of his apparent inability to be honest and open with the public, opting instead for a strategy of deflecting blame or simply hoping awkward questions would fizzle out.

It worked for a while.

But in the end, Johnson – who as a schoolboy declared he wanted to be “world king” – is unlikely to spend much more time in Number 10 than Theresa May, whose premiership he torpedoed.

(c) 2022, Bloomberg · Alex Morales, Emily Ashton

 


5 COMMENTS

  1. Are they using 1 of Biden’s actors to play BJ’s roll too? So now we got rid of the BJ actor.

    According to Australian news media, the Biden facemask was removed by the US Supreme Court as he was declared an illegitimate president. (President of what, I don’t know.) This information was quickly removed by the Deep State.

  2. Since the Deep State Cabal criminals are b”H taken out, their DESPICABLE EVIL Georgia Guidestones monument has been destroyed.

  3. What a despicable disgrace to make such an announcement on 7/7 on the 17th יארצייט of the worst attack ever on the London Underground [which occurred exactly 1 day after announcement of London Olympics (מיום טוב לאבל)], and distract Britons from mourning

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