Health Ministers Sajid Javid and Finance Ministers Rishi Sunak announced their resignations a few minutes apart on Tuesday evening, tired of the repeated scandals that have rocked the government for months. In the aftermath, other less senior members of the government also threw in the towel, including the Secretary of State for Children and Families, Will Quince, as well as an assistant to the Secretary of State of Transport.
Weakened but determined to stay, Boris Johnson will defend his post at noon (11:00 GMT) in Parliament during the weekly session of questions to the Prime Minister, which promises to be electric.
He will then face the chairmen of the main committees of the House of Commons, including some of his most vocal critics within his Conservative party.
The two shock resignations were announced when the Prime Minister had just apologized after yet another scandal, acknowledging that he had made a “mistake” in appointing Chris Pincher to his government in February, “whip” in deputy chief responsible for parliamentary discipline. Conservative MPs.
The latter resigned last week after being accused of touching two men.
On Tuesday, after claiming the opposite, Downing Street acknowledged that the Prime Minister had been informed as early as 2019 of old accusations against Mr Pincher but that he had “forgotten” them when naming him.
Announcing his resignation on Wednesday, the Secretary of State for Children Will Quince explained that he had “no choice” after having repeated “in good faith” in the media elements provided by Downing Street on this case “which turned out to be inaccurate”.
– “Integrity” in question –
The resignation of Rishi Sunak, 42, comes in a particularly difficult economic context, in the midst of a crisis in the cost of living in the United Kingdom.
Britons expect the government to behave in a ‘competent’ and ‘serious’ manner and ‘this is why I am stepping down’, Mr Sunak wrote in his letter to Mr Johnson.
For his part, Mr. Javid, 52, judged that the British were entitled to expect “integrity from their government”.
Writing in the Telegraph, former Brexit secretary David Frost, who also resigned in December, called on Boris Johnson to resign because “if he hangs on he risks dragging the party and the government with him”.
Boris Johnson quickly replaced the two resigners by appointing his Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi to Finance and Steve Barclay, hitherto in charge of government coordination, to Health.
Ministers loyal to him reaffirmed their support, such as Nadine Dorries, in charge of Culture.
It is sometimes “easy to leave”, but “much more difficult” to implement reforms for the country, said Nadhim Zahawi Wednesday on SkyNews.
Despite these marks of support, will Boris Johnson be able to survive this umpteenth crisis, he who has always refused to consider resigning?
Already significantly weakened by the Downing Street party scandal during the pandemic, he survived a vote of no confidence from his own camp a few weeks ago.
Added to this were several sexual cases in Parliament: an MP suspected of rape was arrested and then released on bail in mid-May, another resigned in April for watching pornography in the House on his mobile phone in April and a former MP was sentenced in May to 18 months in prison for the sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy.
The departure of these last two deputies caused partial legislative elections and heavy defeats for the conservatives. And this while the party had already suffered a very poor result in the local elections in May.
The economic context is also particularly delicate, with inflation at its highest for forty years, at 9.1% in May over twelve months, and social unrest.
According to a poll by the YouGov institute on Tuesday evening, 69% of British voters believe that Boris Johnson should resign.
