After surviving a vote of confidence in his leadership of the Conservative Party, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was set for a key cabinet meeting on Tuesday as he seeks to "move on" after what he insisted was a "decisive victory".
The PM saw 148 of his own MPs vote against him on Monday night - but he is adamant that the victory should see him able to "draw a line" under criticism and "focus on what “really matters to people".
Mr Johnson also said he was "certainly not interested" in the idea of a snap election. But the opposition Labour Party is moving to apply further pressure by pushing for a House of Commons vote on standards. The party is urging MPs from all sides to back calls for Mr Johnson’s ethics adviser Lord Geidt to be given the freedom to launch his own investigations into potential ministerial rule breaches.
Read more: Boris Johnson claims mass Tory rebellion over leadership is 'good result'
Tory MPs voted by 211 to 148 in support of the Prime Minister on Monday, but the scale of the revolt against his leadership left him wounded. When Theresa May faced a confidence vote in 2018 she secured the support of 63% of her MPs, but was still forced out within six months.
Mr Johnson saw 41% of his MPs vote against him, a worse result than Mrs May. But the Prime Minister told reporters in Downing Street: "I think it’s an extremely good, positive, conclusive, decisive result which enables us to move on, to unite and to focus on delivery and that is exactly what we are going to do."
He rejected the assertion that he was now a lame duck prime minister who needed to call a snap election to secure a new mandate from the public, insisting he was focused on people’s priorities. Ministers such as Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove and Chancellor Rishi Sunak have all given Mr Johnson their backing - while Health Secretary Sajid Javid said the result gave the Prime Minister a "fresh mandate".
But others were not entirely positive, with Environment Secretary George Eustice saying it is “always disappointing” when there is a “significant minority of your own party voting in such a way”.
Mr Eustice told the PA news agency the result “underlines that as a Government we have got to work very hard to reconnect with our own parliamentary party to reunite them behind the agenda we were all elected to deliver”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Johnson was "utterly unfit for the great office he holds". "Conservative MPs made their choice," he said. "They have ignored the British public and hitched themselves and their party firmly to Boris Johnson and all he represents."
In its motion, to be tabled in the Commons on Tuesday, Labour will ask all MPs to vote to adopt a package of recommendations put forward by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in a report last year. These include a call for Mr Johnson’s ethics adviser to "be able to initiate investigations into breaches of the ministerial code".
The Prime Minister previously said he was putting in place an “enhanced process” for his independent adviser on the code, Lord Geidt, to initiate his own investigations into possible breaches, but that he would still need Mr Johnson’s consent before proceeding.
The Liberal Democrats' leader Sir Ed Davey has also revealed his party will be proposing a parliamentary vote of no confidence in the PM. "We will be tabling a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister today so MPs can have their say," he told the BBC's Today Programme. "I think it's really important. We are looking at a summer of discontent."
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