Boris Johnson is facing growing calls to step down after more than two dozen members of his government quit
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been urged to step down after dozens of his ministers and other cabinet members deserted Downing Street. At the time of writing, 15 ministers have abandoned him, with five announcing their resignations in a single joint letter.
The resignations on Tuesday of Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid set off a tidal wave of departures from Johnson’s Cabinet.
As of early Wednesday afternoon, the ministers for education, the treasury, housing, justice, business, culture, and five others have all handed in their resignations. Five ministers, including Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch and Industry Minister Lee Rowley, announced their departure in a joint letter to the PM.
Their letter echoed those of Sunak and Javid, ending with a call for Johnson to step aside “for the good of the party and the country.”
It is with great regret that I am today resigning as a minister in the Department for Education – I am very grateful to the Prime Minister for having given me the opportunity to serve pic.twitter.com/mDJUksDGM8
Nine Parliamentary private secretaries, as well as two foreign envoys and the Conservative Party’s Vice Chairman for Youth, Bim Afolami, have also announced their departure.
Johnson’s tenure as prime minister has been shaky for some time, and while recent headlines have focused on his role in rallying Western military aid for Ukraine, a number of scandals at home have piled up. With his approval rating hammered by revelations that he hosted numerous lockdown-defying parties at Downing Street during the coronavirus pandemic, and with Britons set to face the steepest drop in living standards since the mid-1950s, the Conservative Party was hammered in by-elections last month.
Hours before the resignations began, Downing Street admitted that Johnson had known of multiple complaints about the “predatory behavior” of MP Chris Pincher before appointing him deputy whip earlier this year. Pincher resigned last week after it emerged that he had groped two men at a private members’ club. However, Johnson remained defiant on Wednesday. Asked in Parliament whether he would resign, the PM said that “the job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances when he has been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
RT (Russia Today) is a state-owned news organization funded by the Russian government. The information provided by this news source is being included by the Libertarian Hub not as an endorsement of the Russian government, but rather because it is being actively censored by Big Tech, Western governments and the corporate press. During times of conflict it is imperative that we have access to both sides of the story so we can form our own opinions, even if both sides are spewing their own propaganda. The censorship of RT, despite likely being a propaganda outfit for the Russian government, reduces our ability to hear one side of the conflict. For that reason, the Libertarian Hub will temporarily republish the RSS feed from RT. Visit https://rt.com
