Boris Johnson must stay in place to deal with the “hugely damaging” No 10 parties scandal and the cost of living crisis because they are his responsibility to fix, according to the former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
The Conservative grandee said he wanted cabinet ministers to “temper their ambitions” and allow Johnson the time to sort out “the big, big crises that are hitting the government”.
He said a leadership contest would be destabilising at the moment. But asked whether it was possible to recover the reputation of the party with Boris Johnson remaining as prime minister, he told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: “None of us know the answer to that question ... Respect and trust you have to earn, and when you lose it, it’s a very difficult task to get it back across the board.
“And so that’s going to be a huge task. The government and the prime minister have set out to try and do that.”
Duncan Smith’s remarks came after a disastrous week for Johnson in which he lost five senior staff members and a string of MPs declared they had lost confidence in him.
Some MPs believe a vote of no confidence in the prime minister is likely in the coming week and Charles Walker, a former vice-chair of the 1922 Committee, told the Observer that Johnson’s removal was “inevitable”. Around 15 Tory MPs have publicly called on the prime minister to resign, including most recently the former minister Nick Gibb.
This weekend, Johnson overhauled his operation, appointing the Cabinet Office minister, Steve Barclay, as his chief of staff, while Guto Harri, a former aide of Johnson’s, becomes his new director of communications.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, spoke to several broadcasters in support of the prime minister on Sunday, attempting to draw a line under the scandal by saying “the ongoing focus on partygate is not helping anyone”.
He also called for Tory MPs to give Johnson “the time and space to deliver on his mandate”.
Kwarteng also claimed it had been legitimate for Johnson to throw a slur at the Labour leader in the House of Commons by claiming that Keir Starmer, when he was director of public prosecutions, presided over the failure to prosecute the serial child abuser Jimmy Savile.
Two other cabinet ministers, Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid, have said they would not have made such a comment, which led to the resignation last week of Munira Mirza, Johnson’s longstanding policy chief.
There has already been some scepticism about the Johnson’s operational shake-up, which will involve creating a new office of the prime minister and potentially centralising more power into No 10.
Gavin Barwell, a former chief of staff for Theresa May, told Sky’s Trevor Phillips On Sunday that Barclay would have a huge brief.
He added: “And then the second challenge, and I think probably the key one, is whether the prime minister is going to listen to the good advice that he will give.
“There’s only so much difference advisers can make if the person at the top is not actually listening to the advice that we’re giving.”
