Government rocked by mass resignations amid fallout from Pincher scandal
Boris Johnson has been on the defensive for the past few months following the Partygate revelations and other issues, but he now faces the gravest threat to his continued tenure in No 10 Downing Street after two senior Cabinet ministers – Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid – resigned within minutes of each of other yesterday evening. In doing so they blasted Johnson’s character and in Sunak’s case, also his economic policies. Their resignations were followed over the course of the evening and into today by a series of resignations of junior ministers and MPs from minor roles including Parliamentary Private Secretaries (junior ministerial aides), Conservative Party vice-chairs and trade envoys. In total, 36 ministers have resigned since yesterday.
They also came less than two weeks after the resignation of Oliver Dowden as Conservative Party chair following the heavy losses in two parliamentary by-elections and exactly a month after Johnson survived a vote of confidence in his leadership by a much narrower margin than expected (with 148 out of 359 Tory MPs voting against).
The catalyst for the latest crisis has been the fallout from the Christopher Pincher scandal. Pincher, previously the government’s Deputy Chief Whip – a role that entails enforcing party discipline and managing colleagues’ welfare – resigned last week after he drunkenly groped two men. It was revealed that this was only the latest in a series of similar incidents going back years, some of which had been flagged to other ministers and officials, but despite which Johnson had appointed him to his government on the basis of his personal loyalty. Over the past few days, amid heavy media scrutiny, the story of what Johnson knew and when evolved from ‘he had not been aware’ to ‘he had been aware of general allegations but not specific ones’ to ‘he had been briefed about specific allegations but had forgotten’.
In many ways the handling of the Pincher affair is completely consistent with the way Johnson has handled similar challenges throughout his career – essentially making dubious decisions then obfuscating and evading scrutiny and accountability as they have unraveled. While such an approach has long been priced in with Johnson, it appears that for many colleagues this appears to have been the final straw, not least since in many cases they felt personally deceived by No 10 as a result of which they made incorrect statements in public. The parallels with the handling of the initial Partygate revelations were apparent, in turn convincing many Conservative MPs who had previously given him the benefit of the doubt that he simply cannot change, and that another two years of such behavior against an increasingly grim economic outlook would be simply intolerable and unsustainable.
Johnson rallies by appointing key allies, but he is rapidly running out of road with another confidence vote potentially taking place next week
Other Prime Ministers may have at least considered stepping down in the wake of such a blow but, when asked by an aide if that he was an option last night, he was reported to have replied “f*** that”. There was no doubt Johnson would plough on and within hours he had already appointed key allies to replace Sunak and Javid. Nadhim Zahawi is the new Chancellor with Michelle Donelan replacing him as Education Secretary, while Steve Barclay leaves his post as the PM’s Chief of Staff to take over as Health Secretary. The message from Johnson and his key allies is very much that the show will go on, but it is not clear that Johnson can prevent his whole government from unravelling.
For so long ministerial loyalty was Johnson’s firewall, but this has now been comprehensively breached – even ministers who have not resigned are reportedly telling him in private that his time is up. He also faces another big challenge, namely the election of candidates to the executive of the 1922 Committee committed to changing the party’s rules to allow for another vote of confidence in his leadership. Under current rules, Johnson is theoretically safe until June 2023 but with more and more MPs publicly questioning his leadership – including some who supported him only last month – it appears more likely than not that the anti-Johnson slate will win the elections – which have been brought forward to Monday afternoon – and change the rules to allow for an expedited vote.
This means that the leaders of the anti-Johnson faction have a very narrow window of opportunity to force him out before then and trigger a leadership contest which could take place over the summer. This in turn would allow the new party leader and PM to present themselves to the party and wider public at October’s party conference and still have best part of two years ahead of the next election to secure a historic fifth term in office for the party.
