Boris Johnson, 57, was left wounded last night after dozens of Conservative MPs rebelled against the Prime Minister in a confidence vote in the Tory leader.
Just 211 out of 359 Tory MPs backed Mr Johnson in the 1922 Committee’s ballot.
A total of 148 MPs rebelled against the Conservative leader, leaving the Prime Minister without support from around four-in-ten of his colleagues.
Mr Johnson’s position came under pressure after he was issued with a fixed penalty notice during the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Hillman investigation into partygate.
However, the Prime Minister appeared defiant as he responded to the confidence vote.
He said: “I think it’s a convincing result, decisive result and what it means is that as a Government we came to move on and focus on the stuff that really matters to people.”
Mr Johnson added: “I’m grateful to colleagues for the support that they’ve given me and of course I understand that now we need to come together as a Government and as a party, and that is exactly what we can now do.
“And what this gives us is the opportunity to put behind us all the stuff that I know the media have quite properly wanted to focus on for a very long time, and to do our job, which is to focus on the stuff that I think the public actually wants us to be talking about, which is what we are doing to help the people in the country and all the things we’re doing to take this country forward.”
The Prime Minister appeared to turn his attention away from internal party management towards dealing with the cost of living crisis, NHS backlogs and levelling-up the United Kingdom.
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