British voters have punished forcefully at the polls the scandals of Boris Johnson. Pressure is mounting again for the prime minister to resign after the Conservative Party lost two seats in the House of Commons on Thursday in two by-elections in widely different parts of England.
The elections were the first electoral test after the ‘partygate’ and the result shows the enormous repudiation and animosity of the citizens against Johnson. The leader of the Conservative Party, Oliver Dowden, He submitted his resignation after knowing the results. “Our supporters are shocked and disappointed by the latest developments and I share those sentiments. We cannot continue as if nothing happened. Someone must take responsibility.” states in his letter of resignation to the prime minister.
Johnson, on an official trip to Rwanda, already anticipated on Thursday that he would not resign, even if there were a double defeat. After knowing the result, he affirms that he is not trying to “play down the importance of what voters have said”, but attributes what happened to the difficulties due to the rise in the cost of living. The question now is whether there will be more resignations in his own government forcing him out or whether the Party will find a way to get rid of him.
Conservative defeat on home turf
One of the seats at stake was Tiverton and Honiton a constituency in Devon in south-west England, which has voted Conservative in every election for almost a century. In 2019 the party obtained a majority of almost 25,000 votes, which was now swept away with the victory of the candidate of the liberal Democrats, Richard Foord, by a majority of more than 6,000 votes. The victory, by an unprecedented margin, suggests that the Conservatives they may lose the next election in what has always been their territory. “Tonight the people of Tiverton and Honiton have spoken for Britain. He has sent a loud and clear message: It is time for Boris Johnson to go, and go now,” Foord said.
The other seat was contested in Wakefield, in West Yorkshire, an industrial area in the north of England, in the former “red belt”, which, in 2019, due to Johnson, voted Conservative for the first time in 90 years. The seat has returned to Labor hands, with the election of Simon Lightwood. “Wakefield has shown that the country has lost confidence in the Tories. This result is a clear verdict that the Conservative Party has run out of energy and ideas,” Labor leader Keir Starmer said in a statement.
Get rid of Johnson
The double loss is a disaster for Johnson and his political future. The electoral pull and his popularity among the lower and middle classes has turned into an unmitigated rejection. The Conservative Party could find a way to get rid of him, despite the failure earlier this month of an internal vote of no confidence to unseat him. 41% of Tory MPs voted against him. One possibility is that the 1922 Committee change the rules to be able to present a new motion of censure against Johnson, something that could only happen in a year’s time, under current rules.
Two and a half years ago, Johnson’s electoral push carried the Conservatives to an extraordinary victory, winning an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons. Johnson was successful in the traditionally conservative regions of the south of England, but also in the post-industrial areas of the center and north. Since then Johnson’s behavior has been a succession of personal scandals that has culminated in the ‘partygate’. The populist politician, with a buffoonish charisma that distinguished him from other orthodox politicians and made him so attractive to many, has lied repeatedly and has become an unpopular and hated figure. According to a YouGov poll earlier this month, 60% of Britons think he should resign.