Sunak Faces a New Electoral Headache After Johnson Resigns

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(Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing a fresh election headache after Boris Johnson’s shock resignation from Parliament triggered no fewer than three by-elections that could highlight waning support for the Conservative Party.

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Johnson resigned on Friday night after receiving the findings of Parliament’s Privileges Committee inquiry into whether he misled lawmakers about his knowledge of Covid-19 abuses by officials. While the results were not made public, the former prime minister called the report a “successful political post” in a scathing resignation speech.

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Sunak will have more than just Johnson’s seat on defense. Nadine Dorris, a key ally of Johnson’s, also resigned on Friday from her Mid Bedfordshire seat after being denied a peer on Johnson’s resignation honours. On Saturday, Nigel Adams announced that he would be standing down as an MP with immediate effect, triggering a third by-election.

The by-election complicates Sunak’s hopes of further narrowing the gap with the opposition Labor Party ahead of the general election scheduled for January 2025. Recent polls have Labor up between 9 and 14 points, less than a lead of more than 20 points. in polls conducted in late 2022. Johnson’s seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip could be a challenge as the Conservatives held the constituency in 2019 with a relatively slim majority.

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The Conservatives lost more than 1,000 councilors in a handful of local elections in May, with the traditional third party, the Liberal Democrats, making big gains in the south of England. The LDP has scored three big victories over the Conservatives in a special election in recent years.

The resignation marked a marked downfall for a politician who managed to channel his success in leading the Brexit campaign to lead the Conservative Party to a landslide electoral victory in 2019, securing a historic majority of 80 seats in parliament. His premiership was undone by a series of missteps, culminating in the disclosure of more than a dozen social gatherings in government buildings at the height of the Covid pandemic when his administration ordered a lockdown.

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While Johnson’s straight political career is over, he has hinted that he may try to make a comeback at some point. “It is with great sadness that I leave Parliament – at least for the time being,” he said in his letter.

Some of Johnson’s critics within the ranks of the Conservative Party want Snack to prevent Johnson from standing again in the next general election, while his supporters have warned that such a move could tear the party apart.

“Any attempt to do so would shatter our party’s fragile unity and plunge the Tories into civil war,” Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Brexit chances minister who recommended the former prime minister a knighthood, wrote in the Mail on Sunday.

Energy Security Minister Grant Shapps, who also served in Johnson’s cabinet, said “a lot of drama” came with the former prime minister and that “the world has moved on”. But he did not rule out another return for Johnson, 58, who also served as mayor of London from 2008 to 2016.

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“The only thing I know about Boris Johnson, is not to expect what Boris Johnson is going to do next,” Shapps told Sky News in an interview on Sunday.

His departure also reopens a feud that has simmered since Sunak resigned in 2022 as finance minister in protest at Johnson’s leadership. This move precipitated Johnson’s departure as Prime Minister.

As Sunak returned from a two-day visit to Washington last week, Johnson asked why the government was “passively giving up the prospect of a free trade deal with the US”. He said ministers needed to cut business and personal taxes, and also questioned why the government’s measures to help people with home ownership were “reckless”.

In his resignation statement, Johnson called the committee investigating whether he had lied to Parliament about the Partygate “kangaroo court” and had not come forward with his diagnosis of Tory electoral ailments.

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“We should not be afraid to be a properly conservative government,” Johnson said. When I left office last year, the government was only a few points behind in opinion polls. This gap has now widened dramatically. Our party urgently needs to regain its sense of momentum and its belief in what this country can do.”

The Privileges Committee was seeking to establish whether Johnson deliberately misled lawmakers when he repeatedly denied a breach of the rules occurred during a series of Downing Street rallies – known collectively as “Partigate” – during the coronavirus lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. The Chamber After being fined for breaking the rules himself. Sunak was also fined.

The BBC reported that the committee would have likely recommended Johnson’s 10-day suspension. The BBC said that would have led to a petition of no confidence among his constituents and a possible by-election.

Johnson claimed opponents of Brexit were his downfall. In his manifesto, he launched an attack on the Labor Party, as well as Sunak and Sue Gray, the civil servant whose investigation into Partijet’s party also played a large part in his downfall.

“There is a witch-hunt going on to avenge Brexit and eventually to reverse the outcome of the 2016 referendum,” said Johnson, one of the main architects of the winning “Leave” campaign.

(Updates with Shapps, Rees-Mogg quotes from eighth paragraphs)

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