“The Prime Minister is in a very difficult position now.”
The British Parliament decides new measures in the fight against Omikron diversity. But as the number of votes against is so high, doubts about Boris Johnson’s power are being raised again.
Under pressure: The British Prime Minister also seems to be increasingly unpopular in Parliament.
Photo: Keystone
The evening had already progressed when Khair Stormer had to stand in front of a Christmas tree and describe the disaster in words. Khair Stormer is the leader of the British Labor Party, he is the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. The evening was not as bad as Boris Johnson feared during the day, but it was bad.
That evening, Stormer said it was a “hard blow” to Johnson. In English it’s really simple: “A significant blow.” To make every TV viewer remember this, he repeated the words in the next sentence.
In four votes on Tuesday evening, the British Parliament passed new measures to combat the spread of the Omikron variant, not particularly harshly from a 2-G perspective. But opposition in parliament was greater than ever before when Johnson was prime minister. Tory MP Charles Walker looked at the BBC camera as saying it was the Conservative Party’s “cry of pain”.
Walker is an experienced MP, one of the few in the House of Commons who can speak a little more succinctly than Keer Stormer – and one of those who is openly angry at Johnson this time around. The Prime Minister is now in a “very, very, very difficult position” and “a very, very clear line has been drawn in the sand,” Walker said. The Prime Minister and his team now need to “listen carefully”.
The number of new victims is unprecedented since January
Walker is also the vice chairman of the 1922 committee, and members of the powerful Tory backbench have been sharply critical of Johnson for weeks. Johnson met with the group on its premises in Westminster at 5:30 a.m., an hour before voting began, to save what could no longer be stored. Reporters waiting outside the gate then spoke in a voice appropriate to the occasion. It is useless.
And that evening story is now the story of the numbers. The Omigron variant is currently causing a worrying increase in the number of corona cases, officially counting 59,610 new victims on Tuesday, more than in January.
During the four-hour debate, the government strongly promoted four new measures: the need for masks in closed rooms other than pubs and restaurants, and rapid tests instead of self-isolation after contact with positive test takers. Attendance at major events and compulsory vaccination for NHS staff by the National Health Service.
Leadership change “should be at the table”
The mask requirement was resolved to 411 out of 441, with 40 votes coming from the Conservatives. The vote on the vaccine for NHS staff ended at 385 to 100, and the total number of votes against would have been slightly higher if the double-digit MPs had disappeared due to the positive corona test. It was only with the help of the opposition that Johnson was able to carry out all four measures. Labor will not vote in party politics, Stormer had already said during the day, but “because they are necessary” for action.
If Johnson does not change, the question of a change of leadership next year will “be at the table,” said Jeffrey Clifton-Brown, one of the Tory MPs in the 1922 group. Among those who voted against the measures, however, were not only the Tories from the most conservative to the right, but also Tories of all backgrounds and ages. “The prime minister is in serious trouble now,” said Daisy Cooper, a Liberal Democrat MP.
As a precautionary measure, many Tories may want to send a signal that their actions are not: fire accelerator Omigron may cause further locks, and some conservatives want to prevent it at all costs. For Johnson, managing an epidemic crisis manager is not easy, especially since he is not likely to relinquish his second role as party crisis manager at any time.
By Friday, Cabinet Secretary Simon Case plans to release the results of the inquiry into the banned parties for Christmas 2020 in Downing Street. With this in mind, the Wednesday edition of the Daily Mirror newspaper, on the front page, appeared with a photo of the “extraordinary” as the paper wrote. So watch out: 24 people at a party in the winter of 2020 lockdown, some holding a glass of wine on camera. The 24 were said to be advisers and members of the Tories.
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