The political fortunes of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson may be turning for the worse despite his winning a crucial confidence vote of Conservative MPs.
After a landslide general election victory two and a half years ago, few had expected him to be fighting for his political life in such a short time.
The 211-148 margin is even worse than that by which previous Conservative prime ministers John Major and Theresa May fought off similar challenges.
A few months after winning her confidence vote, May resigned as prime minister while Major lost the general election to a Labour landslide two years after winning his confidence vote.
Not surprisingly, Johnson has decided to fight on. In one of his first comments after the result was announced, he said: “This is a very good result for politics and the country. It is a convincing result, a decisive result.”
Still, with 41 per cent of his MPs wanting to see him go, many are asking whether this poll is the beginning of the end of Johnson as prime minister. No single event can be identified as the cause of Johnson’s fast decline in popularity. But there are many.
Politicians are prone to be obsessively concerned about the prospect of not being re-elected. In the last several months, opinion polls have been pointing to a Labour victory in the UK in the next election.
This prospect does not go down well with ambitious Conservative personalities who believe Johnson has become a liability for their party.
Jeremy Hunt, a former cabinet minister who ran against Johnson in the 2019 Tory leadership contest and who still harbours ambitions to be leader of the Conservative Party, has called on the prime minister to step down.
Conservative MPs have a ruthless tradition of turning on their leaders once they sense they have become liabilities. One need only look how Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign after being told by a number of cabinet colleagues that they could no longer support her.
Johnson has struggled to get a grip on government. He has shown poor judgement in personal matters, often trying to hide his weaknesses by changing members in his close circle of collaborators.
The threat to scrap the agreement signed with the EU on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland after Brexit did Johnson no good with building bridges with moderate Conservative MPs. The pre-Brexit promises of booming trade to follow after the UK lost unfettered access to the EU market is still not a reality.
Even more worrying, US President Joe Biden has practically vetoed any UK-US special trade agreement should Johnson threaten peace in Ireland by scrapping the Good Friday agreement.
More recent tactical failures were the law-breaking parties held in Downing Street when COVID restrictions were in force and adopting a disgraceful policy of deporting migrants to Rwanda.
Gratitude is a rare virtue in politics, especially when MPs see their political career prospects dwindle. They do not think twice about drawing the daggers and using them in the hope of avoiding failure at the polls. In the last election, the 80-seat majority that Johnson delivered to the Conservative Party looks unlikely to endear him with disgruntled colleagues sitting on the back benches.
If precedent is anything to go by, there would be no good outcome from the Conservative MPs’ narrow decision to keep Jonson in power. A bruised Johnson has survived. But he surely must know there will be many who might resort to guerrilla warfare to ensure his wounds become fatal.