Boris Johnson has won vote of no confidence – but 148 voted against in blow to his leadership
Jonathan Brady PA Images
Boris Johnson has won the vote of no confidence in his leadership of the Conservative Party.
It means that the Prime Minister has survived an attempt by Tory MPs to oust him in a vote of confidence.
But the vote was 211 for to 148 against – worse than Theresa May’s performance soon before she resigned.
59% of his MPs backed Boris Johnson compared to 63% for Theresa May.
The vote of Conservative MPs closed at 8pm and the result was announced at 9m.
The result was announced by Sir Graham Brady, who chairs the 1922 Committee of backbenchers.
Welsh Secretary Simon Hart was among the Cabinet ministers present in committee room 14 for the result.
Announcing the results, Sir Graham Brady said: “Good evening.
“I can report as returning officer that 359 ballots were cast, no spoilt ballots, that the vote in favour of having confidence in Boris Johnson as leader was 211 votes and a vote against was 148 votes.
“And therefore, I can announce that the parliamentary party does have confidence in Boris Johnson.”
‘Civil war’
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said a “divided” Conservative Party is “propping up” Boris Johnson after the Prime Minister survived the confidence vote.
“The choice is clearer than ever before: Divided Tories propping up Boris Johnson with no plan to tackle the issues you are facing,” he tweeted.
“Or a united Labour Party with a plan to fix the cost-of-living crisis and restore trust in politics. Labour will get Britain back on track.”
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Liz Saville Roberts said that although Boris Johnson would stay put, “his authority as PM has been shredded by this threadbare victory”.
“Not one Welsh Tory MP openly called for Boris Johnson to resign – a toxic Tory civil war will now continue to pollute our politics Wales. We can do so much better than this.”
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How dare they have confidence in a criminal PM? Never has such a bunch of cowardly crooks enjoyed plundering so openly and brazenly. If this were France we’d all be storming Downing Street with flaming torches.
Now we know that the Conservative party tacitly approves of all Johnson’s criminal, fraudulent and inept actions. 148 of them showed some backbone but the entity that is the Conservative Party approves of all actions of the worst prime minister in anyone’s memory.
This includes the Conservative Party in Wales who uniformly and I understand without exception, declared for Johnson.
We need all Tories and all Tory influence out of Cymru
It’s interesting they are painting this as Johnson has triumphantly “won” a no confidence vote like it was a general election.
Instead of worrying that they lost the confidence of 41% of Tory MPs and 35% of registered Tory party members and 60% of the general public.
Their divisive and hateful politics are coming back to bite them. They can lie their way out of it for a little longer but then they are gone.
We will still have to deal with Unionists, but hopefully they will be less vile Unionists.