Boris Johnson again faces huge pressure to resign amid mountainous strain on his leadership tonight. It comes as more and more ministers have quit following the shock resignations of his Chancellor and Health Secretary.
Once-loyal MPs such as Sally-Ann Hart and Jonathan Gullis have turned on the Prime Minister weeks after voting for him in the confidence vote sparked by partygate. And bookies have tonight suspended betting on the Prime Minister stepping down or being sacked.
Mr Johnson is expected to try to cling on to his premiership role, but if he is forced to quit by his party, here’s how the process would work as reported by The Mirror.
READ MORE: Live updates as Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid resign
Tory MPs and members will hold a leadership contest to choose a new leader - and therefore the new Prime Minister, without an election. This happened in 2019, when Theresa May resigned after months of backbiting.
The exact rules of each Tory leadership contest vary, but there are two stages and the process takes a couple of months.
First, Tory MPs shortlist two candidates. This allows factions of MPs to ‘stitch up’ the shortlist to keep extreme candidates off the ballot paper.
The whittling takes place in rounds of votes, generally held on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The MP with the fewest votes each time gets eliminated, along with any MPs who’ve fallen below a minimum number of votes for that round.
Then, the 100,000 or more Tory members hold a one-member-one-vote election to pick between the top two. The winner becomes leader of the Conservative Party, and goes to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to appoint them as Prime Minister.
If Boris Johnson refuses to resign, can he be sacked?
Yes - but it's not easy. Tory MPs trigger a no confidence vote in their leader if 15% write to the chairman of the 1922 Committee.
Currently there are 360 MPs with the Tory whip, meaning 54 of them need to send letters. But the PM won last month's No Confidence vote, so no further vote can be held until June 2023. This can be changed if the 1922 Committee’s 18-member executive changes rules to hold another vote sooner.
But this is highly possible because elections for a new executive are being held on Wednesday next week (July 13).
So a vote could be held this autumn or even sooner, as long as enough anti-Boris Johnson MPs make the slate.
Is there a General Election if Boris Johnson resigns?
Not necessarily.
The timing of the next election is up to the Prime Minister. It’s due in January 2025 at the very latest, but likely would be earlier than that. Under previous law, a general election was triggered automatically if half of all MPs of all parties vote no confidence in the government. But this law (the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act) was repealed.
What could happen, however, is the new leader of the Tory party could trigger an early general election to secure a personal mandate.
Who is in charge after the Prime Minister resigns or is sacked?
Leaving as Tory leader would not automatically remove Boris Johnson ’s job as Prime Minister.
To resign as PM he must go to Buckingham Palace and offer his resignation to the Queen. He has a role in naming his successor, based on who can command the confidence of Parliament. Importantly, he has some control over the timing of this.
Theresa May resigned as Tory leader in 2019 but remained as a ‘caretaker’ - or ‘lame duck’ - Prime Minister until her succession was chosen.
If Boris Johnson resigns as PM before a successor is chosen, the Cabinet Manual says it is “for the party or parties in government to identify who can be chosen as the successor”.
This suggests the Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab - who stood in for Mr Johnson when he was in ICU with Covid - or someone else senior could take the role temporarily.
But recent precedent suggests the current PM staying on as a caretaker is more likely.
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