‘Pyrrhic Victory’: BoJo Will Drag His Party Down With Him After Winning Confidence Vote – Analyst

On Monday, Tory MPs voted 211 to 148 in support of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had already refused to step down despite the scale of the rebellion against his leadership, vowing to “deliver on what the people of this country care about most”.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson “will probably try to carry on as if nothing has happened” and as if “nothing is going to change” after his survival of Monday’s confidence vote, says Alistair Jones, associate professor of politics at Leicester's De Montfort University.

He draws attention to the fact that Johnson’s “margin of victory is smaller than that of [former UK Prime Minister Theresa May”.

“In fact, in all no confidence votes that the Conservative Party has held, this is the smallest majority that any leader has actually won in terms of a percentage of votes,” the political scientist said.

The tally of 41.2 % of Tory MPs opposing BoJo was significantly higher than the 36.9% voting no confidence in Theresa May six months before she was forced from office in late March 2019.

When it comes to BoJo winning the confidence vote, “Johnson has a Pyrrhic victory, one that sees him stay, but he is not going to be able to do much. He is, in effect, a lame duck prime minister”, according to Jones.

“He won't resign. That is not in his nature. So he will soldier on, dragging his party down with him. The result is likely to be electoral disaster, come the 2024 general election,” the professor argued.

Johnson May Announce Snap Election After Confidence Vote

He did not rule out that Johnson may now “decide to challenge his MPs” and “call a snap general election to demonstrate to them that he has the support of the public the way he did in the 2019 general election”. Jones said that if BoJo does “something like that, it would be severely misguided, because it will actually lead to huge electoral damage”.

Jones was echoed by former Tory MP Matthew Gordon-Banks, who suggested that Johnson would “seek to stay on and rejuvenate his government's fortunes but against a background of rising inflation and economic stagnation” in the UK. At the same time, Gordon-Banks noted that he “seriously” believes Johnson will unlikely remain UK prime minister “for long and not long enough to lead his party into the next general election likely in 2024”.

Referring to No 10 COVID rule-busting parties in 2020 and 2021, British academic and author Rodney Atkinson, for his part, asserted that Britons “will not forgive the partygate fiasco as the centre of Government behaved recklessly while ordinary families could not be with their dying relatives but far more Britons will be paying in their businesses and jobs (high taxes and debt) for the extreme Johnson lockdowns during COVID and the criminality of forced vaccinations”.

In a nod to the confidence vote’s results, Atkinson said that he “cannot see how Johnson can now survive”, arguing that “if the Tory Party thinks his going will solve the problem they are wrong”. According to the author, “a complete change of regime and policies - on everything from family, social policy, foreign affairs, taxation and business - is needed” to be implemented in the UK.

BoJo Wins Confidence Vote

On Monday, Johnson won a no-confidence vote with 211 Conservative members of the parliament voting in favour of the motion and 148 Tory MPs voting against, something that he touted as “good” results.

He insisted he had secured a "decisive" victory, claiming that the government could now "move on" and focus on what "really matters to people". He also rejected the scenario of a snap UK general election, saying he was "certainly not interested" in the idea.

Senior Tory rebel Tobias Ellwood has meanwhile told Sky News that Johnson could face another confidence vote in just six months as the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee is seeking to change the current rules, which stipulate that the PM is now immune from another leadership challenge for 12 months.

The Monday no-confidence vote was organised by the Tory backbench 1922 Committee following senior civil servant Sue Gray's report that determined 16 cases of alleged violations of COVID lockdown rules by No 10 between 2020 and 2021.