I have learned that Boris Johnson is facing a new threat to his post as prime minister, as Tory rebel lawmakers plan to mobilize ordinary people in the party to oust him from No. 10 this summer.
Johnson ran a no-confidence vote on Monday, but 148 of them – 41 per cent of the total – refused to support him.
Backbenchers are now preparing to respond to the double defeat in this month’s by-elections in Tiverton & Honiton and Wakefield, prompting local conservative association presidents to provoke their own vote of confidence in the prime minister.
According to a rarely used rule of the Tory constitution, only 65 local party chairmen are needed to convene an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) of the National Conservative Convention (NCC), a body of 800 people representing the ranks.
The vague rule was first discovered by Brexit supporters, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, who planned to oust Theresa May in 2019 over her failure to pass Brexit legislation by a hanging parliament.
After a meeting is convened, a vote of no confidence in Johnson will be held. Although the result is not binding, its symbolic power would be significant, the rebel lawmakers said, and could offer ministers and even cabinet ministers a reason for the wave of resignations.
May survived a vote of confidence by her deputies in December 2018, and according to the rules of the 1922 committee, she cannot be challenged again for another year.
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But mass activists successfully called an emergency meeting of the NCC for June 2019. Their petition at the time declared “we no longer think Ms. May is the right person to continue as prime minister” and planned to use their meeting to accept a proposal for this effect.
In the end, the meeting never happened because May had succumbed to pressure to resign just weeks before. As well as the prospect of a new challenge from lawmakers, the threat of the disgrace of such a humiliating sentence handed down by the “voluntary” wing of the Tory party was enough to force it.
The National Congress consists of chairmen of conservative associations from more than 600 constituencies. It also includes district and regional officials, as well as 42 representatives of the Young Conservatives and the Conservative Women’s Organization.
“We only need less than half of the 148 constituency presidents to write to provoke a new vote of confidence,” said one of the rebels. “This is the next real boost.”
A judge said: “Just before I voted on Monday, the president of my constituency told me, ‘I hope you will withdraw it.’ This was someone who organized the Brexit vote in my area in 2016. And there are others like him. “
Pressing ordinary people is part of a two-pronged strategy by rebel lawmakers to increase pressure on Johnson.
The Partygate investigation by the Municipal Privileges Committee is due to take evidence and then report in the fall.
If he finds that the prime minister has deliberately misled parliament about violating the №10 blocking law, the municipality as a whole will be able to cast a vote of no confidence and Tory MPs will quickly change their rules to allow a second vote of confidence.
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