This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
It’s not too late to keep Boris Johnson
Petition: As a party member I want Boris Johnson added to the ballot. Link
At the very least, we owe Conservative members a simple yes/no vote on whether to accept their leader’s resignation
Back in 2019, the Conservative Party membership was asked to vote for a new leader following the resignation of Theresa May. She had resigned because she failed three times to pass her Brexit deal, so her position became untenable. She did her best but, being a politician who campaigned to remain in the European Union, trying to get a Brexit deal through Parliament was always going to be a big ask.
But why was the Remain-backing Mrs May selected as prime minister in the first place, and who put her there? Enter the Conservative parliamentary party, the same crowd who are telling us today that we need a new leader, and that Boris Johnson must go.
Following the resignation of any Conservative Party leader, the process of selecting a replacement encompasses MPs in a secret ballot, jostling amongst themselves for their various favourite candidates. Eventually, the last two candidates go into a runoff in which Conservative members select a winner. This is what happened between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt in 2019, when Boris won approximately 64 per cent of the vote, a clear outright winner, and the members choice as leader.
However, three years later, the parliamentary party circumvented the members’ votes by constructively changing the leader. In my view that means they have colluded amongst themselves to get rid of Boris Johnson without consulting anyone else. Boris’ mandate – not only winning the leadership election but also an eighty-seat majority (not to mention the Brexit referendum) – has been completely ignored by a small number of MPs. This is undemocratic and unacceptable to Conservative party members. It has made them very angry. Including me!
That is why I decided to act and co-sponsored a campaign to add Boris Johnson to a separate ballot before the final runoff for the new party leader. It would be a simple yes/no vote by Conservative members on whether to accept Boris Johnson’s resignation. If the membership accepts his resignation, then so be it, and then they can decide who they want as their new leader in the weeks that follow. But if the membership does not accept his resignation, he remains Prime Minister. The members will have had their say and we can all move on.
The chairman of the 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady, argues that having a Boris ballot is against the rules because a resigning leader cannot stand in the next leadership campaign. But this is disingenuous because members are not asking Boris to stand in the leadership campaign, we want a ballot on whether the membership should accept his resignation. Moreover, this is not a 1922 committee matter. It is a Conservative Party Board matter, and under Article 17 of its constitution, the board has the freedom to do what is in the best interest of the Conservative party and its members. Sir Graham Brady as a board member should know this.
We must not underestimate the sheer indignation amongst members, who are sending emails in their thousands to the Conservative party chairman demanding a Boris ballot. It cannot be in the party’s best interests to ignore its members and invalidate their previous votes. If I were either Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, I would see the leadership at this stage as a poisoned chalice, a pyrrhic victory which could lead to anger and division within the Conservative party and leaving us in the political wilderness for a generation.
And all because, ultimately, Boris Johnson was removed by around 50 MPs who, through a herd-mentality series of resignations, were able to unseat our Prime Minister at a time of crisis, despite his record of winning millions of votes and without the formal approval of party members. What a shower.