As 2021 drew to a close Boris Johnson’s political career was teetering on the brink. Partygate accusations had caught up with him and he was facing increasing calls to step down as prime minister.
Far from a fresh start for the troubled leader, the new year saw his political career tumble. Resignation calls continued, but it wasn’t until he was hit with a wave of more than 30 ministerial resignations in July that he was finally forced to admit the game was up.
Not one but two people entered Downing Street to take Mr Johnson’s place in the months that followed - placing 2022 firmly in the history books as the year Britain had three prime ministers.
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The eight-week leadership election held over summer saw eight MPs battle it out for the keys to No 10, but it was Liz Truss who received the most votes from Tory members, pipping initial frontrunner Rishi Sunak to victory.
Having won over the public with a tax-busting manifesto, Ms Truss started hashing out her plans to tackle the cost of living crisis, with her new chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng by her side. But the duo’s mini-budget, which relied heavily on government borrowing, caused market turmoil after it was unveiled in September, and most of her policies were later reversed.
Ms Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister the UK has ever had, spent just 44 days in office - and for 10 of them, the country was in national mourning following the Queen’s death aged 96. After delivering her farewell address on the Downing Street forecourt and slipping away to the backbenches, Mr Sunak stepped forward to lead the fractured party.
A huge question now hangs over whether the new PM can lead the Tories through another general election win, with Labour still way ahead in the polls. We’ve taken a look back at how we got here, and what 2023 might bring.
‘Partygate’ rumbles on as Johnson clings to power
The year began with Mr Johnson embroiled in the ongoing row over lockdown-busting parties in Downing Street and Whitehall, with top civil servant Sue Gray still yet to publish her full findings.
Discontent among Tories was growing, and one MP, Bury South’s Christian Wakeford, crossed the Commons floor to join the Labour party, leading to fears that more may follow in his footsteps. Mr Wakeford accused the Tories of being “incapable of offering the leadership and government this country deserves”, describing them as “a party trying to defend the indefensible”.
Days later, Mr Johnson’s aide Munira Mirza quit after the then PM falsely accused Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile while director of public prosecutions. Mr Johnson later ‘clarified’ his remark after it was widely rebuked.
In April, Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak were fined for attending a birthday bash for the PM in Downing Street as part of a Metropolitan Police probe into partygate. The PM and then chancellor offered their apologies, but Mr Johnson struggled to shake off the label of being the first serving prime minister to be found to be in breach of the law, and he now faces a parliamentary investigation after MPs agreed to refer him over claims he lied to Parliament.
The local elections saw the first real test of public opinion since the partygate scandal broke. The Tories suffered a loss of more than 400 councillors in elections across England, Wales and Scotland, with Labour seizing totemic authorities in Westminster and Wandsworth. The Liberal Democrats also made inroads into the “blue wall” of Tory heartlands, taking control in Woking and Somerset, while also ousting Labour in Hull.
At the end of May, Ms Gray published her report. It gave details of events at which officials drank so much they were sick, sang karaoke, became involved in altercations and abused security and cleaning staff. Mr Johnson said he ‘took full responsibility’ but continued to resist the chorus of resignation calls, including those coming from inside his own party.
Eventually, he was forced to face a confidence vote, which saw 41 per cent of his MPs try to oust him. He insisted he had secured a “decisive” victory as Tory MPs voted by 211 to 148 in support of him - but the scale of the revolt sent a clear message to the vulnerable PM.
Chris Pincher proves to be the straw that broke the camel’s back
The real unravelling of Mr Johnson started when Chris Pincher quit his role as deputy chief whip after allegedly assaulting two fellow guests at the exclusive Carlton Club in London - a scandal that proved to be one too many for the struggling PM.
Mr Johnson tried to contain the row after it emerged he had been told of previous allegations of “inappropriate” conduct by Mr Pincher before subsequently giving him other government roles. Downing Street had said Mr Johnson was not aware of any “specific allegations” about Mr Pincher when he appointed him to the whips office, but it later emerged he was told about allegations against him as far back as 2019. Mr Johnson said he had made “a mistake” and apologised for it.
But over the following 48 hours, Mr Johnson was hit with an exodus of ministers from his administration. Health secretary Sajid Javid and chancellor Mr Sunak were the first to go, with both giving damning statements on the PM’s conduct. Dozens of junior ministers and a handful of other Cabinet members followed, including some of the newly appointed ministers Mr Johnson had tried to fill his dwindling Cabinet with.
Mr Johnson eventually admitted defeat on July 7, saying in his resignation speech that he had fought to stay on because of a sense of “duty” to the “millions of people who voted for us” in 2019. “I have tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we are delivering so much and when we have such a vast mandate and when we are actually only a handful of points behind in the polls,” he said.
Truss’ rise to power - and dramatic fall
A bitter leadership contest over the following weeks saw Liz Truss take the keys to No 10 with her promise of “a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy”. But just two days after Ms Truss travelled to Balmoral to meet the Queen and accept an invitation to form her government, Buckingham Palace announced the monarch’s death.
The new prime minister was informed of the news during a statement in the Commons, in which she set out her plans to freeze household gas and electricity bills under the Energy Price Guarantee - one of just a few of her policies that would eventually see the cold light of day. But the tragic passing of the Queen essentially put politics on hold while the nation mourned.
Towards the end of September, Mr Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget - a £45 billion package of tax cuts funded by increased borrowing, which included scrapping the 45p rate of income tax for people earning more than £150,000 and axing the cap on bankers’ bonuses. In the aftermath, the pound fell to a new 37-year low, and Sir Keir blasted the Tories for “losing control of the British economy”.
After Ms Truss acknowledged the mistakes she made over the mini-budget but insisted she would be standing by her tax-cutting plan, she was forced into her first u-turn. The Truss administration abandoned its plan to abolish the 45p rate of income tax, and less than two weeks later, Mr Kwarteng was sacked as chancellor.
Ms Truss appointed a new chancellor - Jeremy Hunt, who backed the PM’s rival Mr Sunak in the Tory leadership contest - and also announced she would no longer be committing to dropping the planned rise in corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 per cent. In the following weeks, the new chancellor criticised the leader’s previous mistakes, and insisted that he would be making difficult decisions to get a grip on the economy. In a wounding for Ms Truss, he ended up reversing the vast majority of her mini-budget policies.
On October 20, less than two months after her election, Ms Truss announced she would be resigning as PM, telling the country she “cannot deliver the mandate” Tory members had given her.
Will Rishi Sunak revive the Tories?
After becoming the only MP with enough nominations to stand for election, Mr Sunak breezed into No 10, warning his warring MPs that the Conservatives must now “unite or die”. In an attempt to bring the party together, the new PM brought back a number of ministers from both the Johnson and Truss administrations.
Mr Sunak now faces the challenge of repairing the damage done by his predecessor after economists calculated that the higher interest rates sparked by her economic vision cost the nation £10 billion, with higher costs of borrowing. Mr Hunt’s new plans to fill the void of up to £60 billion in the country's finances will likely influence how long and how serious the current recession becomes.
Meanwhile, Labour is still enjoying a comfortable opinion poll lead over the Conservatives, with the latest data suggesting Sir Keir’s party are currently 21 points ahead. Former Cabinet member Mr Javid, who has announced he will not stand at the next election, said he believed Mr Sunak could turn the party around, despite the odds being stacked against him.
Mr Javid said: “If you look at the current polling, it’s obvious the odds are stacked against us. It didn’t help, by the way, in dealing with the pandemic that we saw the rules were broken in Downing Street. And people didn’t like that, and rightly they didn’t like that. And that hurt Boris Johnson, in particular, but it hurt the government at the time.” Mr Javid also said he had backed Ms Truss for the Tory leadership but admitted that “it was obvious right from the start, really, that she wasn’t going to be up to the job” of prime minister.
Earlier this month, senior Tory and chair of the 1922 committee Sir Graham Brady urged his colleagues to thrash out their differences in private rather than taking to the Commons to rebel. He said disputes should be solved behind the scenes to save “friction and division”.
His comments came after Mr Sunak was forced into two climbdowns in the face of mass Tory revolts on onshore wind and house-building targets
Sir Graham said: “The objective should be to have those debates as much as possible privately and arrive at a position on which the party is agreed.” He described the current mood in the party as “very serious”, with Tories acutely aware of the fact there has been more “turmoil” than hoped for in recent times.
Mr Sunak, who is married to the daughter of a tech billionaire, also faces continued digs around his wealth. Labour has accused Mr Sunak of being out of touch with working people, especially after an embarrassing mishap over Christmas went viral.
In footage from a visit to a homeless shelter in London, the PM asked a man he is serving food to: “Do you work in business?” The man, called Dean, replied: “No, I’m homeless. I’m actually a homeless person.” Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner tweeted a clip of the incident, describing it as “excruciating.”
In his New Year message, Mr Sunak admitted the UK’s problems would not “go away” in 2023 after a “tough” 12 months. “I’m not going to pretend that all our problems will go away in the new year,” he said. “But 2023 will give us an opportunity to showcase the very best of Britain on the world stage, continuing to stand with our Ukrainian friends against Putin’s brutality, and defending freedom and democracy wherever we find it under threat.”
Meanwhile, Sir Keir used his New Year message to warn that the UK “needs to change”. He said his party would continue to make the case for a “new Britain” that would fix struggling public services and “grow the economy for everyone”.
Promising to “restore faith” in politics as a “force for good”, he said: “For Britain to become a fairer, greener, more dynamic country – we need a completely new way of doing politics. After everything we’ve been through together, that’s what Britain deserves.”
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