A vote of no confidence (VONC) in Boris Johnson will take place tonight. The announcement came earlier this morning. It was hardly unexpected since The Sunday Times reported yesterday that 67 letters have been received by Sir Graham Brady, 13 more than the 54 needed to trigger a vote under Conservative party rules. Apparently, the mood in No 10 has switched from trying to prevent a vote to figuring a way to win one. They are resigned to it now.
Here's the official statement:
BREAKING: Statement from Sir Graham Brady confirms there will be a vote of no confidence held in Boris Johnson today, from 6pm-8pm. pic.twitter.com/EYwtSsFDjB
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) June 6, 2022
There are 359 Tory MPs so he needs 180 to cling on.
Nobody knows how the secret ballot will go. With about 173 on the government payroll (what do they all do?) he might expect to win but others are not sure, even some cabinet ministers are suspected to be harbouring mutinous thoughts. I forecast a landslide AGAINST him.
Nobody expects him to resign under any circumstances, so if he scrapes the bare minimum (and even if he doesn't perhaps) he will try to cling on and under the rules a second VONC can’t be held for another 12 months, meaning he is almost bound to lead the party into the next general election. If so, most pollsters predict a landslide against him and the Tories. Personally, I think with an economy heading south at a rate of knots, I think defeat is inevitable.
In the end a lot of MPs, noting that he was almost finished, have scrambled out of the trench with bayonets fixed, long after others had gone over the top. This is to try and hold on to their own personal votes and to ensure they don't go down with him. Among them is Jesse Norman who released a statement this morning which was as damning on him as it was on Johnson. I assume he has had drafted up for days:
I have supported Boris Johnson for 15 years, for the London Mayoralty and for PM. Very sadly, I have written to him to say I can no longer do so, for the reasons set out below. pic.twitter.com/0Mjs4hjeSF
— Jesse Norman (@Jesse_Norman) June 6, 2022
If anyone needed proof of the crass idiocy of even what seemed like sensible MPs it is this letter. It has taken Norman 15 years to realise something most of us knew when Johnson first appeared on Have I got News for You in 1998. He is entirely unsuited to being prime minister.
Johnson's low intelligence is masked by his multi-lingual skill but it only means he can be stupid in several different languages, some of them dead. He is a man with supreme self-confidence, nothing to be confident about, no management ability whatsoever and never sees a problem that can't be solved by a three-word slogan and a sprinkle of boosterism. Couple that with being an unscrupulous, unprincipled, amoral and habitual liar who has a reputation for betraying everyone around him I'm surprised he lasted so long.
It just shows what you can get away with in the modern Tory party.
Being stupid himself meant it was always unlikely that he would appoint any cabinet member brighter than he was. Fortunately, in the Conservative party there were plenty of candidates with even less intellectual wattage than him so he didn't need to look very far. Nadine Dorries, Priti Patel and so on - pick your own simpleton. What it says about Gavin Williamson I'm not sure, he seems to have been rejected for being too dim by half.
Whatever the outcome, and as I said I expect he'll be on his way out by tonight, but even if the greased piglet survives the end is nigh. No PM can survive the fact that half his own party is against him for very much longer.
He's toast. Rejoice!
