Boris Johnson to resign as prime minister in statement at 12.30pm
news.sky.com
After a wave of resignations from his government, the PM will announce his exit from Downing Street.
    • MrGamingHimself@lemmy.ml
      7·
      2 years ago

      The TL;DR of why this happened is there was expected to be a vote of no confidence against him. People of the UK were going to make him go through hell and trials and such and he was expected to leave anyways, so he resigned preemptively.

      This is a win for the people though, it’s good he knew he was going to lose anyways and not have us do the song and dance. What happens now though is a little worrying, the sudden resignation of him and 50+ people in the government means it’s a little confusing who’s going to rule now.

        • MrGamingHimself@lemmy.ml
          3·
          2 years ago

          Yeah news just came in he will resign this fall and (from what I understand) will be replaced by someone else within the same party until the next elections. Rival parties are trying to force a snap election to avoid this but we’ll see how it goes.

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      2 years ago

      The Tories have probably guessed that Johnson will destroy the Tory voter base because the public sees him as toxic. Something else could have happened behind the scenes.

      I have long suspected he was only needed as the face of Brexit. Similar to the Trump-to-Biden move in the US, the establishment now needs a ‘sensible’ face. I think Johnson was ‘loved’, in a way. Not by the majority of normal island, but by the vocal minority that gets air time and front pages. He is the UKIP/BNP/EDL’s Tory. He was able to go far enough right to unite the right on Brexit. That’s still a minority bloc, but in electoral terms, it’s enough to secure a Parliamentary majority with the Tory loyalist voters (monarchists, reminiscent for the Empire, hard-work-will-free-you, etc) and the swing voters who rejected Corbyn (but would have voted for e.g. Blair or even Miliband). These voters may not have liked Johnson, but they could overlook his character flaws. The papers ran with the one-sided, the public love him angle.

      Unfortunately, the machinery is now moving into the next phase, which includes selling off Britain’s remaining nationalised industries. The coming alternative is a better dressed and more carefully spoken neoliberal, from either within the Tory party (Sunak, maybe) or from Labour if there’s an election (likely Burnham, depending on the timing). Imagine if someone who appeared competent demolished the NHS? Centrists would lap it up like they did with Cameron (austerity), Blair (mixed economy), and Thatcher (deregulation). The narrative is already there. People have long been talking about the need to introduce fees to use NHS services (beside national insurance contributions), but nobody would believe it if it came from Johnson.

      In short, I think this development started when it became clear that Johnson could secure Brexit (tick) but would not e.g. achieve privatising the NHS.

      Edit: spelling