UK opposition leader Keir Starmer has demanded a general election as three MPs from the ruling Conservative Party, including Boris Johnson, quit parliament following a probe into Covid lockdown-breaking parties.
Labour leader Starmer tweeted that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak “must finally find a backbone, call an election, and let the public have their say on 13 years of Tory failure”.
“This farce must stop. People have had enough of a shambolic Tory government and a weak prime minister no one voted for,” Starmer wrote.
Johnson announced on Friday that he was leaving as a member of parliament, claiming he had been forced out in a stitch-up by his political opponents.
The 58-year-old Johnson has been under investigation by a cross-party committee about whether he deliberately lied to parliament over parties when he was in office.
As the committee prepares to make public its findings, Johnson said they had contacted him “making it clear ... they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament”.
By quitting, Johnson avoids the consequences of a humiliating fight to remain an MP in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency in northwest London where he holds a slim majority of just over 7,000.
He denounced the committee, chaired by veteran opposition Labour MP Harriet Harman, as a “kangaroo court”.
“It is very sad to be leaving Parliament – at least for now – but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically ... with such egregious bias,” he said.
Nadine Dorries, one of Johnson’s allies quit on Friday, while another, Nigel Adams, resigned on Saturday, triggering three by-elections for a government languishing in the polls.
Speculation is rife about Johnson’s next move, and whether he will attempt to run to become an MP again at the next general election, due next year.
Influential Johnson supporter Jacob Rees-Mogg wrote in the Mail on Sunday that said the former Tory leader could “easily get back into parliament at the next election”.
He also warned party officials against blocking such a bid, saying that it would “shatter our fragile party unity and plunge the Conservatives into civil war”.
Sunak was finance minister under Johnson, and it was his resignation that ultimately triggered his then boss’s demise.
The party is still divided as a result, but had recently arrived at an uneasy truce that now looks to be under serious threat.
The energy minister, Grant Shapps, said yesterday that the world has moved on from Johnson and the governing Conservative Party, and that the rest of the country do not miss the drama of his period in office.
Asked about criticism from Johnson and his allies that he was forced out, Shapps told Sky News: “The world has moved on. He is the one who’s removed himself from the current political scene, standing down as a member of parliament.”
“I really like Boris and I worked very closely with him,” Shapps told BBC TV. “He had many qualities ... but I think people both in the Conservative Party and outside don’t miss the drama of it all.”
Johnson’s former director of communications Guto Harri told Sky News that the former leader had been “hounded” out of politics.
Asked if Johnson would be back, Harri said: “It’s virtually impossible to write him off, but I don’t think this is part of an elaborate plot to sort of destabilise and topple Rishi Sunak.”
“I think Boris Johnson feels that there is an opportunity for him now to go off and lick his wounds, but also seize new opportunities.”