How Difficult Is It For Tory Rebels To Unseat Johnson?

More MPs delivered letters of no confidence in the prime minister yesterday

- Sean O'grady

Like a dripping tap, Tory MPs declaring that they can no longer support Boris Johnson as party leader are proving to be a constant and debilitating distraction for the prime minister.

Every time the PM tries to get ahead of events and away from Partygate, if it isn’t some freshly discovered boozy “gathering” then it’s a relatively obscure Conservative MPs grabbing the headlines and keeping the leadership in play. The Brexit anniversary, the trip to Ukraine and now the launch of the levelling-up plan have all been rudely interrupted by uppity Tory MPs.

Yesterday former defence minister Tobias Ellwood declared that he has written to the chair of the 1992 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, to ask for a vote of confidence in the party leader. Anthony Mangnall, elected in 2019, and former minister Gary Streeter later followed suit.

It’s fair to add that Ellwood left the government when Johnson became premier, and Ellwood was himself involved in controversy over a “Christmas party” he attended at the Cavalry Club in London, during lockdown (Ellwood has said it was a business meeting). Even so, his letter of no confidence is as good as anyone’s. Some 54 such letters are required to trigger a vote (which the prime minister might well survive).

Thus far, around a dozen letters are known to have been sent, with probably more undeclared or perhaps imminent, waiting for the final Sue Gray report and/or completion of police investigations. Nonetheless more letters are expected to go in soon.