A 12th Conservative MP has called on Boris Johnson to quit as prime minister, amid continuing backbench anger over allegations of lockdown-breaching parties at 10 Downing Street.
Former minister Gary Streeter, of South-West Devon, was the third MP to announce today that he had submitted a letter of no confidence in Mr Johnson, following Commons defence committee chair Tobias Ellwood and 2019 intake member Anthony Mangnall.
Evangelical Christian Mr Streeter said that, after considering the interim report by senior civil servant Sue Gray into the Partygate affair, he could not “reconcile the pain and sacrifice of the vast majority of the British public during lockdown with the attitude and activities of those working in Downing Street”.
Earlier in the day, Totnes MP Mr Mangnall submitted his letter to the chair of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, Sir Graham Brady.
“At this time I can no longer support the PM,” he said. “His actions and mistruths are overshadowing the extraordinary work of so many excellent ministers and colleagues… Standards in public life matter.”
It followed former minister Mr Ellwood’s announcement of his own letter this morning, declaring it was “just horrible” for Tory MPs to have to defend the Partygate scandal in public.
He suggested Mr Johnson should “take a grip” of the situation and now call a vote of confidence in himself – warning that “this is all only going one way and will invariably slide towards a very ugly place”.
Some 54 letters are needed to trigger a confidence vote, and 180 or more Tory MPs must vote against him before a leadership contest takes place to decide on his replacement.
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Peter Aldous, Tory MP for Suffolk, said on Tuesday that after “a great deal of soul-searching” he had decided that “the prime minister should resign”.
Other Tory MPs to have publicly called on the PM to go include former Brexit secretary David Davis, Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross, leading Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen and veteran backbencher Sir Roger Gale.
Backbenchers are uneasy about the failure of the Sue Gray “update” report to draw a line under Partygate, and there is growing frustration over Mr Johnson’s refused to retract his false claim that Sir Keir Starmer was behind the failure to prosecute disgraced paedophile Jimmy Savile.
Senior Tory MP Julian Smith is among the backbenchers to have attacked both the PM’s “smear” and deputy PM Dominic Raab’ claim that the remarks were part of the normal “cut and thrust” of the Commons.
Tory Simon Hoare MP said prior to prime minister’s questions in the House of Commons that the “false allegation should be withdrawn”.
But Mr Johnson refused to retract his claim at the despatch box, as the Labour leader accused him of “parroting the conspiracy theories of violent fascists to try and score cheap political points”.
Nicola Sturgeon likened Mr Johnson to Donald Trump and accused him of spreading “fake news” over comments made about Sir Keir and the Savile case.