Boris Johnson is set to resign as British prime minister, the BBC reports, after being abandoned by newly appointed ministers and more than 50 others in a rebellion that has left the government dangerously close to paralysis.
With eight ministers, including two secretaries of state, resigning within two hours on Thursday, an isolated and powerless Johnson was set to bow to the inevitable and declare he was stepping down later, media reports said.
“Boris Johnson will resign as Conservative Party leader today,” the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason said.
The prime minister would make a statement to the country on Thursday, his office said.
Sun Political Editor Harry Cole said Johnson was aiming to carry on as prime minister until a new leader was chosen in weeks to come, a task that can take up to two months.
After days of battling for his job, Johnson had been abandoned by all but a handful of allies. It was far cry from when Johnson, 58, rose to power in 2019 when he won a large majority, capturing votes in parts of Britain that had never supported his Conservative Party before.
Even his finance minister, Nadhim Zahawi, who was only appointed to his post on Wednesday, had called on his boss to resign.
“This is not sustainable and it will only get worse: for you, for the Conservative Party and most importantly of all the country,” he said on Twitter. “You must do the right thing and go now.”
A delegation of senior ministers and a senior figure representing Conservative lawmakers who are not in government went to Downing Street on Wednesday evening to tell Johnson he needed to go and to make a dignified exit.
But he refused to budge, and even sacked Michael Gove, one of his most effective ministers who, according to media reports, had told the British leader he should quit.
“I am not going to step down,” Johnson told a parliamentary committee. The Sun newspaper quoted an ally of the prime minister as saying that rebels in his party would “have to dip their hands in blood” if they wanted to get rid of him.
Johnson had suggested that he had a mandate to govern from the almost 14 million voters who voted for the Conservatives in December 2019 when he swept to power with a promise to sort out Britain’s exit from the European Union after years of bitter wrangling.
The crisis erupted after lawmaker Chris Pincher who held a government role involved in pastoral care was forced to quit over accusations he groped men in a private member’s club.
Johnson had to apologise after it emerged that he was briefed that Pincher had been the subject of previous sexual misconduct complaints before he appointed him. The prime minister saying he had forgotten.
The issue followed months of scandals and missteps, including a damning report into parties at his Downing Street residence and office that broke strict COVID-19 lockdown rules and saw him fined by police.
