Lockdown Party: Boris Johnson Survives Confidence Vote

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has survived a confidence vote that could have seen him removed from office.

Despite serious discontent within his Conservative Party, Johnson won a vote of confidence yesterday by 211 to 148 votes. Winning the vote means that Johnson is now immune from a leadership challenge for another year.

The confidence vote was triggered yesterday by Conservative Party official, Graham Brady, who announced that he had received letters calling for a no-confidence vote from at least 54 Conservative Party members of parliament – enough to trigger the measure under party rules.

Johnson needed to win the backing of a simple majority of the 359 Conservative legislators in the British parliament to remain in power.

If Johnson had not secured that majority, the party would have been forced to choose a new leader who would also have become prime minister.

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Though Johnson has survived the vote, losing the support of so many of his parliamentarians is a serious challenge to his authority.

The result also leaves unanswered the deep divisions within the Conservative Party, less than three years after Johnson led the party to its biggest election victory in decades.

With no clear frontrunner to succeed Johnson, most political observers believed ahead of yesterday’s vote that he would defeat the challenge to his rule.

Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from London, said earlier that Johnson was expected to narrowly survive the vote.

“Most people who are observing this, and within the party, think he is going to squeak through…. But it is perhaps going to be a close-run thing, and it is going to be a very nervous afternoon for the prime minister,” he said ahead of the vote.