LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is holding his first cabinet meeting on Tuesday after a tense day of political turmoil. Earlier, he won by a narrow margin in a no-confidence motion of his party members. A large number of party MPs voted against him as a leader. Johnson is meeting his cabinet ministers, who largely publicly endorsed him. The ministers asked the lawmakers leading the rebellion to stand by his (Johnson’s) leadership for the betterment of the country.
The message from Downing Street was that Johnson would call on his ministers to move forward on the government’s priorities of easing financial pressure on families, accelerating and facilitating access to National Health Service (NHS) care, and making streets safer.
“This is a government that cares most about the people of this country,” Johnson, 57, said in a statement from Downing Street on Tuesday. He said, “We have pledged £37 billion to support families financially, hire 13,500 more police officers to keep communities safe, and open about 100 community diagnostics centers to open the NHS to the COVID backlog. So that people can get care closer to home.”
He said, “Today, I pledge to continue with these priorities. We are on the side of hard working British people.” However, the controversy over parties in Downing Street violating the rules of the Kovid-19 lockdown in Johnson’s presence is not yet completely over and it also played a role in the vote of no confidence on Monday.
211 members of the Conservative Party voted for him to remain in office, while 148 voted against him. Johnson said the turnout was widely in his favour, with 58.8 percent voting in his favor against 41.2 percent. However, these results have given his opponents a chance to criticize him, while his supporters say the results show that the majority of party members are with him.
