Guwahati: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will resign on Thursday, the BBC reported, after being spurned by 50 other newly appointed ministers and more than 50 others in a mutiny that brought the government perilously near to collapse.
According to media reports, Johnson was prepared to accept defeat and announce his resignation later after eight ministers, including two secretaries of state, quit in the previous two hours.
Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, announced that Boris Johnson would step down as the head of the Conservative Party today.
After fighting for his job for days, Johnson had lost all except a small group of his allies. It was a far cry from Johnson’s rise to power in 2019 when he gained a sizable majority and earned support from regions of Britain that had never voted for his Conservative Party before. Johnson, 58, at the time.
Even Johnson’s finance minister, Nadhim Zahawi, who took office just on Wednesday, had requested Johnson step down.
“This is not sustainable and it will only get worse: for you, for the Conservative Party and most importantly of all the country,” he said on Twitter. “You must do the right thing and go now.”
In the midst of a cabinet exodus, UK education minister Michelle Donelan, who had only been in the position for two days, resigned on Thursday, claiming that Prime Minister Boris Johnson had placed her in “an unsustainable situation.”
“I am deeply saddened that it has come to this, but as someone who values integrity above all else, I have no choice,” she wrote in a statement posted on Twitter.