[ad_1] Boris Johnson received the killer email that blew up his career as an MP as he jetted to Cairo at lunchtime on Thursday.The former PM looked
[ad_1]
Boris Johnson received the killer email that blew up his career as an MP as he jetted to Cairo at lunchtime on Thursday.
The former PM looked grim-faced after taking his seat in business class on flight BA384 to the Egyptian capital.
The former UK Prime Minister, who was the MP for Uxbridge in Greater London, stepped down yesterday, triggering a by-election.
His resignation came as the Privileges Committee recommended he be suspended from parliament for more than 10 days amid a row over alleged breaches of lockdown rules in Downing Street, a scandal known as “Partygate”.
Mr Johnson has since told friends he has been the victim of a plot to reverse Brexit and insisted: “I am not going to give up.”
The Sun reports Mr Johnson was forced to quit after a senior Conservative MP on the Privileges Committee put the boot in.
It was equally split over whether to give him his marching orders with a ten-day suspension until Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin sided with Labour. Sources said he broke ranks with fellow Tory MPs to join Labour’s Harriet Harman and her allies.
Mr Johnson was then notified of the decision in a hammer-blow email.
One insider said: “It was Bernard who plunged in the knife.”
An onlooker on the flight said: “Boris didn’t look happy.”
Some MPs accused Mr Johnson, who resigned on Friday night, of trying to “blow up” the party in an act of revenge.
As civil war threatened, veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash joined the growing number of Tory MPs to announce they are stepping down at the next election.
An army of Labour activists and MPs, meanwhile, descended on Mr Johnson’s Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency to campaign in the forthcoming by-election before it has even been triggered.
The decision by former Cabinet minister Mr Adams to quit, with immediate effect, as MP for Selby, North Yorkshire, means the Conservative Party will have to fight another seat.
And it means current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak now faces three by-elections in England after Boris loyalist Nadine Dorries announced she was resigning as MP for Mid Bedfordshire.
Mr Sunak also faces a Scotland by-election, which is he expected to lose.
No. 10 Downing Street is now on high alert in case former Cabinet minister Alok Sharma quits too, after he went to ground amid the bitter turmoil when he did not appear on Mr Johnson’s resignation honours list.
One senior Tory said: “This is totally toxic for Rishi. He isn’t cut from the cloth of the party.
“He doesn’t care about the party. He is only out for himself.
“Many in the party thought Rishi was Boris’ chief assassin and they can see what is happening now.
“Rishi is 100 per cent responsible for all of this.”
The MP accused Mr Sunak of tearing up BoJo’s election-winning manifesto pledges and watering down Brexit.
“Our very democracy is at risk,” the Tory insider said.
“We are seeing the utter arrogance of a group of people who think they can just remove someone who was democratically elected.
“It is the establishment and the blob coming together.”
The term “the blob” has been used by Conservative Party members to refer to civil servants accused of scheming against the government.
Last night top Tories hailed My Johnson as a political titan and said he may return to frontline politics.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, another Boris loyalist, hailed his “extraordinary connection” with Brits.
He said that, by delivering Brexit, Mr Johnson has ushered in the “biggest political change this country has seen for 300 years”.
Former Home Secretary Priti Patel added: “He is the most influential politician in Britain since Margaret Thatcher.”
James Duddridge MP, a right-hand man for Mr Johnson in parliament, said: “He has not left politics and will be back in the Commons. Why? It is in his blood …”.
Mr Johnson made his decision to go some hours after reading privileges committee chairwoman Ms Harman’s email on Thursday.
She said the Partygate investigation found he had lied to parliament and would recommend he was suspended for at least ten days.
The punishment would have meant Mr Johnson almost certainly facing a by-election.
Sir Bernard denies he broke with the committee’s Tory MPs to side with Labour and finish Mr Johnson off.
However, several sources pointed the finger of blame at him.
Instead of facing the ignominy of being forced out, Mr Johnson decided to seize the political initiative and quit instead.
Before doing so, he held a series of intense talks with allies on the phone during Thursday and on Friday.
Mr Sunak and his Downing Street aides were not warned and only found out about his resignation, and broadside against the PM, on Twitter.
Mr Johnson arrived back in London from Cairo yesterday as the civil war sparked by his departure raged on.
He has told friends he thinks he has been stitched up and is the victim of an anti-Brexit plot.
He told one: “There is clearly a big operation to undo Brexit. It is so sad to see the opportunities of 2019 being steadily squandered.”
Dropping a heavy hint that he could one day return to frontline politics, Mr Johnson said: “I am certainly not going to give up.”
Some Tories fear Mr Johnson could try to set up his own party in a move which risks tearing apart the Conservative Party, the most successful election-winning machine in the world.
One Rishi loyalist said: “He could go nuclear and set up his own party. That would be wild, but he might.”
Throwing fuel on the fire, leading Tory party figure David Campbell Bannerman said he believed it could be a possibility.
He said yesterday: “We could be in a position of having to renew the Conservative Party from the ground up. The party is in a desperate state.”
He also said that party members must wrest control back from Downing Street.
Other senior Conservatives have accused Boris of being a “petulant child” who is trying to “blow up the Tory party” because he has been caught lying.
One said: “This is Boris being Boris and lobbing grenades on his way out.”
A minister and Rishi loyalist said: “I am sad to see Boris go. We were all fed up over Partygate and the allegations over Chris Pincher’s sexual misconduct, but he was popular. There is no one like him.
“If we were nearer to an election it would be World War Three but as we are not we might get away just with skirmishes.”
A former Cabinet minister said: “Everyone knows we will be toast if we get rid of another leader. We have to stick with Rishi and be loyal.”
Another senior Tory said: “Boris is trying to blow Rishi up on the way out the door but the person he has most blown up is himself. If he thought he had the votes and could win he would stay.”
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
[ad_2]
Source link
COMMENTS