RECAP: Boris Johnson to be questioned by senior MPs with PM set to appear before Liaison Committee
The result leaves the PM clinging to his premiership after 41% of his party voted against him.
The Prime Minister insisted he had secured a “decisive” victory despite 148 of his own MPs voting to oust him on Monday night, arguing the Government could now “move on” and focus on what “really matters to people”.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdThe Prime Minister will appear before the Liaison Committee, made up of the chairs of the Commons select committees.
While the make-up of the panel that will question the Prime Minister has not been announced, Mr Johnson could face a tough time as a number of the Tory MPs that chair committees have been critical of his leadership.
When Theresa May faced a confidence vote in 2018 she secured the support of 63% of her MPs, but was still forced out within six months.
Politics Live: Reaction and fallout as Boris Johnson wins no-confidence vote despite large rebellion
Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds raised Boris Johnson’s confidence vote, telling Kwasi Kwarteng during business questions in the Commons: “If the Business Secretary believes integrity and honesty are important in all walks of life, he should have voted against the Prime Minister last night”.
Shadow business secretary Mr Reynolds said: “If a chair or chief executive of a FTSE 100 company presided over a culture of rule-breaking, broke the law themselves and then said they’d do it again, would that person have the Business Secretary’s support or would he demand better standards than in public life?
Mr Kwarteng replied it was “right to deserve and to ask actually, to demands the highest standards in any profession, across any position, in any institution.”
Mr Reynolds responded: “I agree, but if the Business Secretary believes integrity and honesty are important in all walks of life, he should have voted against the Prime Minister last night.”
Appointing an independent arbiter of the ministerial code would “usurp” power from the Prime Minister, MPs have heard.
Cabinet Office minister Michael Ellis said the Prime Minister is “accountable for the conduct of the executive”, adding: “That authority and that accountability derives from the Prime Minister’s ability to command the confidence of this House. That derives from the members of this House, including those who hold office, all of us, at the behest of the electorate.
“This Government is committed to maintaining that constitutional position and the accountability of the Prime Minister, including in decisions.
“If we usurp that and hand that authority to someone who doesn’t have electoral accountability, that would be a constitutional irregularity, to hand such decisions to another appointed individual without a check or a balance would be to undermine the position fundamentally.”
Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) said MPs had been subject to more independent scrutiny in recent years, asking: “If this House is to be subject to independent investigation as members, why should the Prime Minister and his ministers be treated differently?”
Mr Ellis later added the Government would abstain on any vote put to the Commons, telling MPs: “We do not support the suggestion that the recommendations of one particular report should be adopted without due consideration as a single block.”
Boris Johnson is set to meet his Cabinet on Tuesday as he seeks to keep his premiership afloat by putting a bruising confidence ballot firmly behind him.
The Prime Minister insisted he had secured a “decisive” victory despite 148 of his own MPs voting to oust him on Monday night, arguing the Government could now “move on” and focus on what “really matters to people”.
He also poured cold water on the prospect of a snap election, saying he was “certainly not interested” in the idea.
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has said Boris Johnson won the confidence vote “clearly” and now the party must “move forward”.
Speaking on Sky News, he said: “The Prime Minister won it with 59% – that’s actually more than he got in terms of support when he was elected leader of the Conservative Party.
“We’ve had that vote now, it was the prerogative of those calling for it to have it.
“The Prime Minister won it clearly, he won it by 63 votes, and now the most important thing is to respect that vote and move forward.”
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said her party would “consider all options” when asked if the Opposition would table a vote of no confidence in prime minister Boris Johnson in Parliament.
Ms Rayner told BBC One’s Breakfast show: “Well we will consider all options but to be honest I think the Prime Minister is just once again making it very difficult to deal with the issues that people face today.
“The cost-of-living crisis, the chaos that we have seen around the transport and our NHS that needs vital support, so therefore we do need to get on to those issues but we can’t do that while the Prime Minister continues to limp on because he has no confidence of his backbenchers, he has no confidence of any other political party and he has lost the will of the British people, so he should do the right thing and resign.”
She earlier said: “Like I say, today Labour’s put forward a motion which I will be pushing through the House which is about implementing the full independent report into standards in public life which at the moment Boris Johnson has cherry-picked and watered down.
“The ministerial code, we think it should be fully implemented and therefore we raise the standards, that’s the first thing we need to do is set the bar.
“The British people deserve the best from our politicians not worst so the bar should be set at a reasonable level which says if you lie to the British public, if you get a fixed-penalty notice because you broke the law whilst in office by your own rules, then you shouldn’t be Prime Minister of this country.
Tory MP Tobias Ellwood, who has been calling for Boris Johnson to resign since February, said he accepts the result of the confidence motion “for the moment”.
The chairman of the Commons Defence Committee and MP for Bournemouth East told Sky News: “This is far from a conclusive result – it’s not a defeat but it’s not a win.
“So for the moment I accept the democratic outcome and I encourage all colleagues to do the same.
“But 41% is a significant chunk of MPs that now need to be included in shaping the party’s future.
“The conduct over the last couple of days shows there’s a lot of work to be done to unite the party.
“In Number 10 Jacob Rees-Mogg tried to spin this all as a Remain plot based bizarrely on an article that I wrote on trying to improve the Brexit model, by daring to suggest that we join the single market.”
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner says prime minister Boris Johnson is “arrogant, dismissive, a liar” and is “mortally wounded after surviving a confidence vote.
Speaking to Kay Burley on Sky News, Ms Rayner said: “No I don’t want Boris Johnson to stay in post because as you know many of the public see politicians in general as untrustworthy – Boris Johnson is pulling down standards in public life which is why we’ve got the motion today to uphold them.”
Rayner added: “I think he is doing a disservice to the country and it is pretty clear now that the British public have lost all confidence in Boris Johnson, I mean, if you can’t have a prime minister that follows his own rules and doesn’t lie to Parliament and lie to the British public then where is the standards, we have lowered the tone so bad that he could get away with just about anything.
“I don’t think it is a good day. I think he is mortally wounded now and I think he has only got an 80-odd majority within Parliament and therefore he is pretty clear 70-odd percent of his backbenchers didn’t back him so I think he should have done the right thing by now and resigned already, but this Prime Minister doesn’t really consider himself to follow rules.”
She added: “Number 10 was the most heavily fined house in the whole of the United Kingdom when it came to the Covid rules, cleaners were having to clean up vomit and wine off the walls, it wasn’t a one-off, this was serial partying going on in Number 10 when people couldn’t see their loved ones… I think every day that Boris Johnson is prime minister is damaging the standards in public life and it damages us all.”
Dominic Raab said potential losses for the Conservative Party at two upcoming by-elections in Wakefield, West Yorkshire and Devon’s Tiverton and Honiton, would have little effect on a general election result the following year.
Speaking on LBC, he said: “By-elections are often an opportunity for a protest vote in a way that a general election isn’t.
“Governments of the day often lose by-elections to go on to win them at a general election.
“But we’ll do everything we can do win both of those seats and support both of those great candidates up there.”
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab has said the vote of confidence in Boris Johnson will be less damaging to his position than it was for former prime minister Theresa May because he has a larger majority in Parliament.
Mr Raab told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “We won the biggest majority since 1987 in 2019, and that’s very different from, for example, the situation Theresa May found herself in because there was a hung parliament.
“But there’s no doubt there are challenges, and no doubt we need to listen to some of the critics and the dissenting voices, I accept all of that.”
We now know the outcome of the vote on confidence - but it remains to see exactly how Boris Johnson responds. Here’s a look at what could happen next.
Full analysis HERE
Angela Rayner said Boris Johnson would get “absolutely hammered” should he call a general election in the coming months.
When asked whether Labour would stop calling for Mr Johnson’s resignation now the no confidence vote had been held, Ms Rayner told the PA news agency: “We’ve got the answers to the problems that the country faces at the moment, but the country will not move on while Boris Johnson the liar, the cheat and the law breaker is continuing as Prime Minister, because it sets the standard for the future of our democracy.
“If we allow a prime minister to continue in office when he smirks and laughs and has taken the public for fools and lied and broken his own laws, well there has to be a line that is drawn, and I think the public won’t move on until Boris Johnson is gone.”
DUP MP Sammy Wilson has declined to say whether his party backs Prime Minister Boris Johnson, insisting his leadership is an internal matter for the Conservative Party.
“What the country needs and what we need is an effective Prime Minister and a Prime Minister who has a vision for how he takes the country through the current difficulties,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.
“I think the vote last night is going to make it more difficult for him to command the control and respect in his own party, but that’s something which the Conservatives have to deal with. We will work with whoever the Prime Minister happens to be.”