Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government By Tom Rogan
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fighting for his political survival on Tuesday after the resignation of two of his top government ministers.
In near-simultaneous resignation letters, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid referenced their losses of trust in Johnson’s leadership. Sunak’s departure is especially damaging to Johnson because the prime minister plucked Sunak from relative obscurity to give him the second most powerful job in the British government. Javid previously held that position. The chancellor is Britain’s equivalent of the treasury secretary — except the chancellor has far greater influence over the government’s tax and spending decisions.
Tuesday’s events follow a litany of incidents that have greatly undermined Johnson’s leadership credibility. The prime minister’s public image was significantly damaged by revelations that he attended numerous parties at his No. 10 Downing Street office-residence while imposing COVID-19 lockdowns. The drip-drip of new party revelations and inconsistencies in Johnson’s statements have enraged the public due to the perception of a class system in which private school-educated Oxford graduates such as Johnson believe there is one rule for themselves and one rule for everyone else.
But Johnson’s immediate crisis, the one that precipitated these resignations, was a letter sent on Monday by a member of the House of Lords and a former senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, the United Kingdom’s State Department equivalent. That letter accused Downing Street of lying over claims that Johnson, while serving as foreign minister in 2019, had not been briefed on misconduct allegations against former Foreign Office minister and Conservative Parliamentarian Chris Pincher. Johnson subsequently appointed Pincher to another senior government post.
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