Senior Conservative says "it's time to resolve this" as he withdraws support for the PM

Ex-minister Tobias Ellwood to submit letter of no confidence in PM

 

MP urges Boris Johnson to call vote of confidence himself rather than waiting for 54 letters to be submitted to 1922 Committee

 

Jamie Grierson and Rowena Mason

Wed 2 Feb 2022 09.25 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/02/boris-johnson-ex-minister-tobias-ellwood-to-submit-letter-of-no-confidence-in-pm

 

The senior Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood has revealed he is to submit a letter of no confidence in Boris Johnson, as more Tories broke cover to criticise the prime minister after the Sue Gray report into the Downing Street lockdown parties.

 

Ellwood, who is chair of the defence committee and a former Foreign Office minister, is the fifth MP to publicly declare intentions to submit a letter after the Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, and the backbenchers Andrew Bridgen, Sir Roger Gale, and Peter Aldous. At least 54 letters would be required to trigger a vote among Tory MPs on Johnson’s future.

 

Others who have called on Johnson to resign include the former cabinet ministers Andrew Mitchell and David Davis, as well as committee chairs Caroline Nokes and William Wragg. A 2019 intake MP, Elliot Colburn, has also hinted he had submitted a letter by telling constituents that his “patience had snapped” and suggesting the prime minister should consider his position.

 

The former prime minister Theresa May, Aaron Bell from the 2019 intake and veteran backbencher Gary Streeter have also all been publicly critical of Johnson, while the centrist Tory MP Tom Tugendhat has declared he would run to replace Johnson in any leadership contest.

 

Speaking on Sky News, Ellwood said: “I believe it’s time for the prime minister to take a grip of this; he himself should call a vote of confidence rather than waiting for the inevitable 54 letters to be eventually submitted.

 

“It’s time to resolve this completely so the party can get back to governing, and, yes, I know the next question you will ask, I will be submitting my letter today to the 1922 Committee.”

 

It would need to be at least 54 Tory MPs – or 15% of the party – to submit letters stating the prime minister had lost their support in order to trigger a confidence ballot.

 

If that number of letters is received by Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee of backbenchers, Tory MPs would vote anonymously on whether the prime minister should continue in office. If Johnson were to lose, there would be a leadership contest and he would be barred from entering.

 

Ellwood, the MP for Bournemouth East and former defence minister, said on Wednesday morning: “This is just horrible for all MPs to continuously have to defend this to the British public.

 

“The government’s acknowledged the need for fundamental change, culture, make-up, discipline, the tone of No 10, but the strategy has been one, it seems, of survival, of rushed policy announcements like the Navy taking over the migrant Channel crossings.

 

“And attacking this week Keir Starmer with Jimmy Savile … I mean who advised the prime minister to say this? We’re better than this, we must seek to improve our standards and rise above where we are today.”

 

He added: “I don’t think the prime minister realises how worried colleagues are in every corner of the party, backbenchers and ministers alike, that this is all only going one way and will invariably slide towards a very ugly place.”

 

Only Brady knows how many letters have been submitted to him and he is in charge of making any announcement that the threshold for a ballot has been reached.

 

A group of up to 20 Tory MPs from the 2019 intake were on the brink of submitting letters of no confidence in the prime minister two weeks ago. The incident was known as the “pork pie plot” after the group gathered to discuss their options in the office of Alicia Kearns, the MP for Melton.

 

However, none of them have since confirmed that their letters actually went in to Brady and some are thought to have withdrawn them since the defection of their colleague Christian Wakeford to Labour.

 

 

09:47

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2022/feb/02/uk-politics-live-boris-johnson-levelling-up-keir-starmer-sue-gray-report-latest-updates

 

Tory MP Tobias Ellwood urges Johnson to call confidence vote himself to 'resolve' leadership crisis

Boris Johnson will be hoping to get the debate switched to levelling up today, but No 10 has been unable to keep the leadership crisis out of the news. Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, has just made the PM’s position more difficult by announcing that he is joining the list of MPs formally calling for a vote of no confidence. Ellwood told Sky News:

 

This is just horrible for all MPs to continuously have to defend this to the British public. The government’s acknowledged the need for fundamental change, culture, make-up, discipline, the tone of Number 10, but the strategy has been one, it seems, of survival, of rushed policy announcements like the Navy taking over the migrant Channel crossings.

 

And attacking this week Keir Starmer with Jimmy Savile ... I mean who advised the prime minister to say this? We’re better than this, we must seek to improve our standards and rise above where we are today ....

 

I don’t think the prime minister realises how worried colleagues are in every corner of the party, backbenchers and ministers alike, that this is all only going one way and will invariably slide towards a very ugly place.

 

I believe it’s time for the prime minister to take a grip of this; he himself should call a vote of confidence rather than waiting for the inevitable 54 letters to be eventually submitted.

 

It’s time to resolve this completely so the party can get back to governing, and, yes, I know the next question you will ask, I will be submitting my letter today to the 1922 Committee.

 

Johnson could invite his supporters to submit letters calling for a no confidence vote as Ellwood proposes. It would be a version of the “put up or shut up” strategy adopted by John Major in 1995, when he was under pressure to resign from Tory MPs. Major triggered a leadership contest which led to him beating John Redwood convincingly. The result did quash further speculation about his leadership for a period, but almost a third of his MPs voted against him, and for the last two years of his premiership he was seen as permanently weakened.

 

According to the Spectator’s tally, 10 other Tory MPs have already called for Johnson to quit. Ellwood’s quotes imply he wants Johnson to quit too, but calling for a no confidence vote to “resolve” the situation is not quite the same thing, but Ellwood implies that what matters most is just getting a clear decision on Johnson’s future.