UK’s former Brexit chief urges ‘significant’ personnel changes at Number 10
Without a “total reset” at 10 Downing Street, Boris Johnson’s future as prime minister is in serious jeopardy, Lord David Frost tweeted on Thursday. The Tory peer and former UK chief Brexit negotiator was quoting a Telegraph article that called for a comprehensive political house-cleaning with “all the neo-socialists, green fanatics and pro-woke crowd exiting immediately.”
The Telegraph piece shared by Frost argued that “without drastic, urgent action, the [Conservative] party will be sucked into the kind of death spiral that sunk John Major’s government in the mid 1990s” and replaced it with a left-wing coalition led by Labour. “Such an outcome,” writer Allister Heath warned, “would be calamitous, and result in a vicious class and cultural war from which the country would never recover.”
Heath laid out some potential routes out of such doom for Johnson, including him staying in office while trying to address the “immediate damage caused by Partygate” before delegating “huge amounts of power to a David Frost-like CEO in No. 10.” Accompanying such a delegation would be the wholesale “clear-out” of the woke crew, a “total reset.” Failing that, the PM would have to step down, the article suggested.
Johnson’s political future hangs in the balance amid civil and police inquiries into allegations several lockdown-violating parties were held at government buildings, including Downing Street.
Conservative MPs are reportedly awaiting the findings of the inquiry being run by top civil servant Sue Gray before moving on any possible no-confidence actions against Johnson. Gray’s report is expected to be delivered to Downing Street in the coming days.
Johnson this week rejected opposition calls to resign, and has insisted he did not break the lockdown rules. Some 54 votes of no-confidence from Conservative MPs would be sufficient to initiate a potential leadership change.
