The prime minister and his aides are locked in a battle for survival until at least next week
Conservative MP William Wragg has denounced in Parliament that “employees from the prime minister’s office, advisers, cabinet ministers and others” are “blackmailing” those who want Boris Johnson to resign. They threaten them, according to him, with the withdrawal of public funds from the constituencies they represent and with encouraging the publication of articles in the press that damage their reputation.
Wragg, in a statement delivered at the beginning of the meeting of the Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, which he chairs, affirmed that these acts mean breaches of the ministerial code of conduct and encouraged his threatened colleagues to denounce him to the president of the House of Representatives. the Commons and the Police.
The Prime Minister’s spokesman has responded to Wragg’s accusation by stating that he is “not aware of any evidence to support these clearly serious allegations”. And he added that, “if there is any evidence to support them, we will analyze it very carefully.” The president of the Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, has invited those affected to write to him, and has pointed out that it is the task of police and prosecutors to investigate possible crimes.
Wragg is one of a number of Conservative MPs who have publicly called on Johnson to resign, following the revelation that Downing Street staff and the Prime Minister himself organized and attended social gatherings that would have broken government lockdown rules. during the pandemic.
Fear
On Wednesday, veteran Conservative MP David Davis called for Johnson to resign and another, Christian Wakeford, joined the Labor parliamentary group. In the feverish atmosphere of Westminster, it is interpreted that Wakeford’s “betrayal” paralyzed the mobilization of a group of deputies to gather the number of signatures, 54, that would force the calling of elections for the new party leader.
Johnson’s collaborators have made it known that the prime minister is willing to stand as a candidate in the event that the number of signatures is reached to cause an election. A new leader would need 180 votes in the parliamentary group. The majority of ‘Tory’ seats seem willing to wait for the result, next week, of the investigation into the meetings by an official to decide the future of Johnson.
The threat of withdrawing public funds from unruly MPs’ constituencies is shocking, because the most significant aim of the Government’s domestic program is to balance the UK economy. The loudest group of rebels against Johnson is made up of MPs elected in 2019 from ‘Brexiter’ and impoverished areas. According to analysts of the electoral system, only 3 of the 45 elected in those regions would retain their seat if the vote were today.
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