Britain’s Boris Johnson defiantly vowed on Wednesday (July 6) to fight on against growing calls for him to resign as prime minister, but his pledge to keep going was met with scornful laughter at a parliamentary appearance.
Badly wounded by the resignations of a stream of senior colleagues and junior ministers who said he was not fit to govern, Johnson sought to come out fighting at parliament’s weekly prime minister’s questions session.
But Johnson’s performance encountered a brutal response, as more than 20 lawmakers have now quit government posts in protest at his leadership, including former finance and health ministers Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid.
Underlining the tenuous position he is in, some colleagues in his cabinet team of top ministers struggled to contain their laughter as the opposition Labour leader, Keir Starmer, poked fun at his cabinet for being in the “charge of the lightweight brigade.”
Three members of Johnson’s own party asked whether he would resign.
Gary Sambrook, executive secretary of the 1922 Committee of Conservative lawmakers, said Johnson had also told MPs on Tuesday that they should have intervened to stop former whip Chris Pincher from “drinking too much” on the night he was alleged to have committed sexual misconduct.
Overall, it was a muted performance for a prime minister, who has seen his political fortunes tumble from a landslide election victory in 2019 to now, when the resignation of his finance and health ministers opened the floodgates for more junior ministers to quit.
(Reuters)
