LONDON — Boris Johnson said Thursday he will resign as UK prime minister, following a majority rebellion from his cabinet, a wave of government resignations and a crushing loss of partisan support caused by his handling of the latest sex and sex scandal. harassment of his party.
Johnson said he planned to stay in office until the Conservative Party chooses a new leader, which might take several months. He said he expected the timetable for his departure and the selection of a leader to be finalized on Monday by a committee of Conservative lawmakers.
“Clearly it is now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there must be a new leader,” Johnson said in remarks outside Downing Street. “The process of choosing that new leader should start now.”
He said he had tried to stay in office because he felt it was his duty and obligation to continue the work he had done since 2019, when Johnson led the Conservative Party to a landslide general election victory on the promise that he would deliver Brexit.
“I want to tell you how sorry I am to be giving up the best job in the world,” Johnson told a group that included some aides and his wife, Carrie, who was carrying their daughter, Romy. “But that’s what there is”.
Johnson’s decision capped a dizzying 48 hours in British politics that began Tuesday night with the unexpected resignation of two of his most senior ministers: Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid. They were followed by a string of resignation announcements by other lawmakers and officials throughout Wednesday and Thursday morning.
Johnson’s resignation brings an abrupt end to a tumultuous tenure marked by a landslide victory three years ago and a successful push to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union but which has collapsed under the burden of an unrelenting series of scandals.
The 1922 Committee, the powerful body representing the Conservative Party’s second-tier lawmakers, is likely to use the summer break to go through the process of choosing the new party leader who will become prime minister. At the latest, they will seek to install the person by the time of the annual party conference in the fall.
Possible candidates include Sunak and Javid; Lizz Truss, the foreign secretary; Suella Braverman, attorney general; and Nadhim Zahawi, who briefly replaced Sunak at Treasury. There are two independents: Jeremy Hunt, the former foreign secretary who challenged Johnson in the party’s leadership race in 2019, and Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
It was unclear whether Johnson will hold onto power until the fall, given the intense backlash once morest him in the party. The opposition welcomed his departure but said it was long overdue.
Keir Starmer, leader of the Labor Party, said it was “good news for the country that Boris Johnson has resigned”, but added: “it should have happened a long time ago”.
Johnson’s latest difficulties arose last week following Chris Pincher, a Conservative lawmaker, got drunk at an exclusive London club where he allegedly groped two men. Johnson had named Pincher to a high position in the party in February despite previous complaints of inappropriate behavior once morest Pincher.
Johnson initially denied any knowledge of the earlier allegations, but it was later revealed that he was aware of them, eventually acknowledging that it had been a mistake to give Pincher a high position.
As members of Johnson’s party resigned from government, one following another voiced opposition to Johnson’s leadership, denounced him for lack of integrity in office and called on him to resign, underlining his precarious position.