A vote of confidence was held in parliament yesterday evening to decide whether Conservative MPs wanted Boris Johnson to be replaced.
Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee announced that he had received the necessary number of letters calling on Boris Johnson to resign to enable a ballot.
The vote concluded that 211 Conservative MPs out of the 359 who voted had confidence in Boris Johnson as party leader.
As ever there were divisions within the party.
On Monday morning, John Penrose MP resigned as the PM’s Anti-Corruption Champion.
Speaking to Sky News, John Penrose MP for Weston Super-Mare felt that it was “pretty clear” the Prime Minister had broken the ministerial code.
MPs were not obligated to share how they voted and they cast ballots in secret.
However, MP Chloe Smith, for Norwich North took to Twitter to say:
“I’ll be voting to back Boris Johnson”
How does a vote of confidence work?
A vote of confidence is triggered when over 15% of MPs from the party in power have written to party bosses to say they have no confidence in their leader.
In Monday’s situation, over 15% of Conservative MPs wrote to the 1922 committee chairman to express the lack of confidence they had in Boris Johnson.
This triggered a Conservative MP only vote, which led to the find the MPs did have confidence in Boris Johnson.
