Boris Johnson is in “real trouble” and a vote of no confidence in his leadership could come as early as next week, the former Conservative leader William Hague has predicted.
It comes amid a growing trickle of Tory MPs calling for the prime minister’s resignation in the wake of senior civil servant Sue Gray’s report into the Partygate scandal.
The former cabinet minister, Andrea Leadsom, said in a letter to constituents there were “unacceptable failings of leadership that cannot be tolerated and are the responsibility of the prime minister”.
While the MP did not call for Mr Johnson’s resignation, she said every Conservative “must now decide individually on what is the right course of action that will restore confidence in our government”.
Lord Hague, the Tory leader between 1997 and 2001, said the comments were “another indication” the Conservative Party is “moving faster” towards a vote of no confidence.
He told Times Radio: “A leadership ballot, which I said earlier could come next week, or at the end of June, a few more letters like that, and it will come next week”.
Under the party’s rules, 54 MPs must write a letter expressing no confidence in Mr Johnson’s leadership to the chair of the Conservatives’ 1922 committee, Sir Graham Brady, for a vote to be triggered.
Referring to calls from MPs such as Sir Bob Neill urging the prime minister to step aside, Lord Hague stressed: “Boris Johnson is in real trouble.
“The Sue Gray report has been one of those sort of slow fuse explosions in politics, it’s still going along, a lot of people misread it really the events of last week meaning the trouble is over.”
Lord Hague, who oversaw the creation of the secretive process for a confidence vote in the party, added: “That’s actually not the mood in the Conservative Party which is very, very troubled about the contents of that report.”
“I think the Conservative Party will need to resolve this one way or another, obviously, because to be an effective party they need to rally behind the prime minister they’ve got, or they need to decide to force him out.”
“I think they’re moving, either next week, or around the end of June, they are moving towards having a ballot. It looks like that”.
Almost 30 MPs have publicly called on Mr Johnson to resign, but due to the secretive nature of the process, only Sir Graham will know the true figure of letters that have been submitted.
Speaking on Sky News, Lord Stephen Parkinson, an arts minister and former adviser to Theresa May, said it was “pointless speculating” about a confidence vote “unless or until it happens”.
“Well there’s an awful lot of speculation about the numbers of letters that go in and past experience shows, not just then but before, the only person that knows how many letters that have been sent in is the chairman of the 1922 Committee,” he said.
“It’s pretty pointless to speculate about the numbers before then, it’s a distraction from the work of government and in government we’re getting on with making sure that we grow the economy to help with the cost of living.”
