Another junior minister has resigned. That makes a total of nine resignations this evening – four Tory aides, two senior cabinet ministers, one junior minister, the trade envoy to Kenya and the vice-chair of the Conservatives. (That almost works to the tune of “The twelve days of Christmas”)
With great sadness I am resigning as Solicitor General. I won’t be doing media interviews. pic.twitter.com/8kr9ecRECg
— Alex Chalk (@AlexChalkChelt) July 5, 2022
I am very sad to be resigning as the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Kenya with immediate effect👇 pic.twitter.com/rBKSdbMCQ7
— Theo Clarke MP (@theodoraclarke) July 5, 2022
What will tomorrow bring?
* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.
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8 Comments
It says something about the incompetence of the cabinet clowns that it took a retired senior civil servant rather than a politician to light the blue touch paper. This really is unprecedented in our own history or, so far as I know, in any other European democracy. Meanwhile the Conservative Party has to rediscover its traditional ruthlessness to get rid of the monster. With a fraying NHS being crippled further with bit by bit outsourcing, no serious plan in place for continuing Covid, recession around the corner and more and more families on the breadline, the distractions of a government party spending months and months sorting out its internal problems would take us yet further downhill.
We should be anticipating a General Election; it could be Johnson’s desperate throw of the die, but more likely, a successor seizing advantage of a honeymoon upswing..
We need to spell out obvious truths about the complicity of all cabinet ministers in severely damaging trust and that we are all worse off as a consequence of Brexit, putting many into acute hardship.
We have to keep up the pressure, Ed Davey needs to raise his game; under Johnson, there are something like thirty vulnerable Conservative seats that could fall to us, however without Johnson most might slip from our grasp. We have to demonstrate that the causes of damage to the country are endemic in the Tory Party.
I don’t believe that a ‘snap’ GE is on the cards; just ‘Saving Big Dog’ doesn’t meet the criteria.
However, we should emhasise the culpability of members of this government through scandal after scandal in keeping Johnson in No.10. The rumours about Nadhim Zahawi’s loyalty being bought with No.11 are believable ( it doesn’t matter if they’re true) so it’s yet more evidence about personal advantage being the ‘last refuge of the scoundrel’ in this administration..
Johnson will have to be dragged ‘kicking and screaming’ from No.10 and the longer this ‘circus’ goes on the more damaging it will be, not just to Johnson, but to the whole Conservative party..
The beauty of Johnson’s character (or lack of it) is that there is always another scandal
just around the corner.
I think that expats misjudges the Prime Minister. Johnson will do anything to keep the job, including calling a snap election. I hope he does. Imagine an election in which the PM and his party try to convince voters to give them another term and in which Johnson spews out lie after lie to try and stay in power. I think it will happen unless the cabinet come together to throw him out, which I doubt they have the bottle for since they have all been handpicked to be loyal to the PM. If he’s still in office after the weekend, then prepare for a GE. In fact prepare for a GE regardless, because no better opportunity will present itself for the LibDems to gain seats.
expats,
Normally like you I wouldn’t believe that a ‘snap’ GE was on the cards, but very much like Trump I think Boris Johnson is a totally self centred narcissist, who will do or say absolutely anything to bypass a problem for five more minutes. Thus change of rules of 1922 Committee, could easily be followed by calling a General election in the hope that no-one will stop him and he might win it. Indeed he could easily dream that he would win it and be unassailable as a winner once again.
It wouldn’t be ‘Save Big Dog’, it would be ‘Save My Ass’.
Overall though, I think we need to go further than even you suggest. It isn’t just Boris Johnson who is the problem – He can be got rid of. It isn’t even the members of his Cabinet who are the problem – as far as the Conservative Party are concerned, they can go too. It’s not even Jacob Rees Mogg, Michael Gove and rest of the Brexiteer ERG. We have to make Conservative party itself the problem.
They all knew what he was like. The elected him as leader to lie his way to victory for them. They did nothing so long as he was winning. Now he’s a liability, it’s too late for them to just replace a few headline figures and pretend that the last three or even seven years of chaos was nothing to do with them.
We have to totally nail them.
Well said, David Evans! I believe you’re absolutely right.
” We have to make Conservative party itself the problem.”
Seconded
I’m not convinced about an early General Election.
1. Turkeys don’t usually vote for Christmas, Johnson or no Johnson.
2. The repeal of the Fixed Parliament Act enabled a return to the Royal Prerogative…… which, by tradition, always acceded to a Prime Ministerial dissolution request. People may remember last time the High Court rejected Johnson’s prorogation……. which now giving the Monarch reason to defer a decision to dissolve parliament until confirmed by the High Court.
Should this happens it gives time for a reconstituted 1922 Committee to complete another No Confidence ballot……. which will be negative this time and enable a fresh leadership election.
All the fun of the nonsensical Fayre and a great triumph for democracy ?