On Thursday, Boris Johnson announced that he would be resigning as Britain’s Prime Minister after many of his advisers and government ministers called for him to do so.
“It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister, and I’ve agreed with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of our backbench M.P.s, that the process of choosing that new leader should begin now and the timetable will be announced next week,” Johnson said in his resignation speech. “And I’ve today appointed a cabinet to serve, as I will, until the new leader is in place.”
Johnson went on to say, “Above all I want to thank you, the British public, for the immense privilege that you have given me. And I want you to know that from now on, until the new prime minister is in place, your interests will be served and the government of the country will be carried on.”
“Being Prime Minister is an education in itself. I’ve traveled to every part of the United Kingdom and in addition to the beauty of our natural world, I found so many people possessed of such boundless British originality and so willing to tackle old problems in new ways that I know that even if things can sometimes seem dark now, our future together is golden,” he concluded. “Thank you all very much.”
Johnson’s decision comes within two days of the unexpected resignations of two of two of his highest-ranking ministers — the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and the health secretary, Sajid Javid — followed by numerous resignations from other officials throughout Wednesday and Thursday morning.
It is unclear if Johnson will remain in power while a new prime minister is selected due to the strong backlash he has faced from the party. As explained by The New York Times, “The 1922 Committee, the powerful body that represents Conservative Party backbench lawmakers, is likely to use the summer vacation to complete the process of selecting the new Conservative Party leader who will become prime minister. At the very latest, they will want to have installed the person by the time of the annual party conference in the fall.”
“Among the potential candidates are Mr. Sunak and Mr. Javid; Liz Truss, the foreign secretary; Suella Braverman, the attorney general; and Nadhim Zahawi, who briefly replaced Mr. Sunak as chancellor. There are also two outsiders: Jeremy Hunt, a former foreign secretary who challenged Mr. Johnson for the party leadership in 2019; and Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee,” The Times added.
