LONDON-(MaraviPost)—British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Thursday, July 7, 2022 resigned as Conservative Party leader amid the growing lack of support from his party and the pressure for him to step down.
Johnson made the announcement from outside Downing Street adding that the process for choosing the new leader of the Conservative Party will begin immediately.
Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister resigns
“It is so sad I have to give up the best job in the world but no one is remotely indispensable in politics,” said Johnson.
His resignation comes after two members of his Cabinet abounded the party and one of his closest allies, Treasury Chief Nadhim Zahawi, publicly told him to resign for the good of the country, NPR reported.
The lawmaker has however signaled his intentions to stay in the office until a new party leader is elected, a move which many of his critics have questioned.
He also disclosed that he would stay as the prime minister until a replacement is chosen.
On Thursday morning, more than 50 members of government also resigned from their posts, including five cabinet ministers and on Wednesday afternoon, five ministers resigned in one swoop.
Johnson’s last miles of reign was marred with endless series of scandals that wrecked his public image just after he narrowly survived a vote of no confidence in early June.
One of the heated scandals surfaced after police fined him for attending one of many parties that took place in Downing Street during lockdown. He also recently lost two MPs due to sex scandals, and failed to regain their seats in by-elections.
His rebels had threatened to tweak party rules and allow another vote in the near future if Johnson doesn’t resign and it was expected that he would lose.
Meanwhile, it is expected that the one who will replace Johnson as the Conservative party leader would also take over as Prime Minister.
BLANTYRE-(MaraviPost)—President Lazarus Chakwera, has arrived in London through Heathrow Airport, accompanied by the First Lady Monica Chakwera.
They were welcomed by officials from the British Foreign Office.
The Malawi leader left the country yesterday evening through Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) for United Kingdom to attend the Global Education Summit on Financing Global Partnership for Education (GPE) 2021-2025.
The Summit, which will be co-hosted by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, and the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, will bring together Heads of State and Government as well as stakeholders and youth leaders, and provide a platform for partners to chart a way forward towards transforming education systems in partner countries, through exchange of best practices.
It will also offer the opportunity for leaders to make 5-year pledges to support GPE’s work to help transform education systems in up to 90 countries and territories.
Deliberations at the Summit will focus on the Power of Education –A Conversation between Global Champions; Transforming Education for Girls; Financing for Impact and Recovery and; What Now? Priorities for Transforming Education in the Coming Five Years, among others.
U.S. Will Require Negative COVID-19 Test From U.K. Travelers
The United States will require airline passengers from Britain to get a negative COVID-19 test before their flight, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced late Thursday.
The new travel restrictions come as a new variant of the coronavirus is spreading in Britain and elsewhere.
The U.S. is the latest country to announce new travel restrictions because of a new variant of the coronavirus that is spreading in Britain and elsewhere.
According to Associated Press, airline passengers from the United Kingdom will need to get negative COVID-19 tests within three days of their trip and provide the results to the airline.
The order was signed on Friday and will go into effect on Monday.
“If a passenger chooses not to take a test, the airline must deny boarding to the passenger,” the CDC said in its statement as quoted by the AP.
The agency said because of travel restrictions in place since March, air travel to the U.S. from the U.K. is already down by 90%.
Last weekend, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the new variant of the coronavirus seemed to spread more easily than earlier ones and was moving rapidly through England.
But Johnson stressed “there’s no evidence to suggest it is more lethal or causes more severe illness,” or that vaccines will be less effective against it.
This week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said three airlines with flights from London to New York — British Airways, Delta, and Virgin Atlantic — had agreed to require passengers to take a COVID-19 test before getting on the plane.
United Airlines on Thursday agreed to do the same for its flights to Newark, New Jersey.
Britain has been under considerable pressure since the word of the new variant of the virus was made public. Some 40 countries imposed travel bans on Britain, leaving the island nation increasingly isolated.
France relaxed its coronavirus-related ban on trucks from Britain on Tuesday after a two-day standoff that had stranded thousands of drivers and raised fears of Christmastime food shortages in the U.K.
French authorities said delivery drivers could enter by ferry or tunnel provided they showed proof of a negative test for the virus.
But the French restrictions were particularly worrisome, given that Britain relies heavily on its cross-Channel commercial links to the continent for food this time of year.
The victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next President and Vice President of the United States of America continues to spark controversy as to what the future holds in as far international relationship is concerned.
Election in USA, super power as she is, attracts interests of almost all the countries across the world as the two parties—the Republicans and Democrats—have policies that work in antagonism thus USA allies have their own favourite among the two.
United Kingdom, a country that thinks of itself as America’s closest ally, had his own Prime Minister Boris Johnson tilting towards re-election of Donald Trump and the winning of Biden obviously puts at an awkward position.
“This country’s had a good relationship with the White House over the last few years,” UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said at a Downing Street press conference on Monday.
“It’s had a good relationship with the White House for many, many years and I have no doubt that we will continue to have a very, very strong, very close relationship with our American friends,” he added.
Following the defeat of Trump Boris swallowed his pride; he sent a sycophantic message to Biden over the weekend but his congratulation was dismissed as insincere by his critics in the UK who pointed out that members of Johnson’s government and Conservative lawmakers had openly endorsed the re-election of Donald Trump.
The most damaging indictment, however, came from a former Barack Obama spokesperson, Tommy Vietor, who tweeted: “This shape shifting creep weighs in. We will never forget your racist comments about Obama and slavish devotion to Trump.”
A Biden aide told CNN that “President-elect Biden believes deeply in the special relationship, and he looks forward to making that partnership even stronger. To be sure, our British allies are indispensable partners across the range of challenges, and that view is uniformly held among those close to the President-elect.”
However, the perception that Johnson is a Trump-style leader — whether it is fair or not — has traveled across the Atlantic. Indeed, Biden himself was reported to have described Johnson as a “physical and emotional clone” of Trump last December.
American and British government officials told CNN that, while they believe the two leaders will have a functional working relationship, there might be barriers because of personality differences.
The “racist comments about Obama” that Vietor refers to came about during the 2016 Brexit referendum. Obama had reluctantly intervened in the Brexit debate, saying he would prefer the UK to stay in the European Union. In response, Johnson — not the prime minister at the time, but a Conservative lawmaker and one of the leading figures in the Brexit campaign — wrote that “the part-Kenyan President” had an “ancestral dislike of the British empire.”
Tyson Barker, a former State Department official under President Obama and Vice President Biden, told CNN “there is a distaste for Boris Johnson’s populism and his willingness to lie. That might irk people at lower levels of a Biden administration.”
However, he added that Biden’s “political instinct is to be a healer and I cannot see how that would not extend to the UK.”
Boris Johnson, the British prime minister escaped a car crash unharmed after a protestor run into his car outside Parliament on the afternoon of Wednesday 17 June.
Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed the incident.
Reports revealed that the accident happened when a protester who was demonstrating about Turkey’s operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq ran out into the Prime Minister’s convoy when he was leaving the parliament building via the gates of Westminster Palace.
This led to the damage-only collision of the two of the vehicles in the prime Minister’s convoy.
A report by CNN revealed that Johnson was travelling in the car at the time of the accident and he has escaped unhurt.
The man has however been arrested for offences under Section 5 of the Public Order Act and for obstructing the highway and police have refused to disclose further details of the man
Boris Johnson names son Nicholas in honor of two doctors who saved his life
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has named his new born son after the two doctors who saved his life while he suffered from coronavirus last month.
Making the announcement, the fiance to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Carrie Symonds, 32, on Saturday, 2nd May 2020 revealed on Instagram that the newborn baby was named Wilfred Lawrie Nicholas Johnson after the two doctors who treated Boris Johnson, Dr Nick Price and Dr Nick Hart.
Carrie Symonds was quoted by CNN saying: ” Wilfred after Boris’ grandfather, Lawrie after my grandfather, Nicholas after Dr Nick Price and Dr Nick Hart – the two doctors that saved Boris’ life last month,”
The couple welcomed their newborn baby on Wednesday after they announced in February that they were expecting a baby in early summer.
According to The Guardian, Dr Nicholas Price is a consultant in infectious diseases and general medicine and Prof Nicholas Hart is the director of the Lane Fox Respiratory Service at the Guys and St Thomas’ Trust, and a professor of respiratory and critical care medicine at King’s College London who specialized in rehabilitation and home mechanical ventilation with chronic respiratory failure.
Meanwhile, the prime minister is expected to take a short period of paternity leave and reports revealed that the family is planning to live in their Downing Street flat.
His Excellency Prof. Arthur Peter Mutharika, President of the Republic of #Malawi, has sent a message of congratulations to Right Honourable Boris Johnson following his election as Prime Minister of the Great Britain.
Your Honour,
On behalf of the Government and the People of the Republic of Malawi and indeed on my own behalf, I would like to extend my sincere and heartfelt congratulations to Your Honour on your election as Prime Minister of the Great Britain.
Your election manifests the confidence and trust that the people of the Great Britain have in you. It is my sincere hope that your ascendance to the higher office will further strengthen the friendly relations that exist between our two countries.
May I take this opportunity to wish Your Honour personal good health and the well-being of the people of the Great Britain.
Please accept, Your Honour, the assurances of my highest consideration.
Jeremy Hunt, Boris Johnson, Rory Stewart and Esther McVey have already said they will run for the leadership
LONDON-(MaraviPost)-The race to become the next Conservative Party leader has begun, following Theresa May’s announcement that she will step down next month.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock is the fifth Tory to enter the race.
He told the BBC that delivering Brexit was “mission critical” and Mrs May’s successor must be more “brutally honest” about the “trade-offs” required to get a deal through Parliament.
The leadership contest will determine who is the UK’s next prime minister.
Party bosses expect a new leader to be chosen by the end of July.
She agreed with chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, that the process to choose a new leader should begin the week after she stands down.
Five candidates have, so far, confirmed their intention to stand:
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt
International Development Secretary Rory Stewart
Health Secretary Matt Hancock
Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson
Former Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey
‘Fresh face’ needed
Announcing his candidacy, Mr Hancock ruled out a snap general election in order to resolve the Brexit stalemate, saying this would be “disastrous for the country” and would risk seeing the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in power “by Christmas”.
Instead, he said his focus would be on getting a Brexit deal through the current Parliament and “levelling” with MPs about what this would mean for the UK.
He told Radio 4’s Today programme he would push harder on alternative arrangements to the Northern Irish backstop but also be more upfront than Mrs May had been about what compromises the UK would have to make.
REUTERS; Amber Rudd is not standing but wants to shape the debate on Brexit
He said there was no point in becoming prime minister unless he was straightforward about the trade offs – “between sovereignty and market access and the trade-offs to get a deal through this Parliament”.
He also said the party needed a “leader for the future not just for now”, capable of appealing to younger voters.
“We need to move on from the horrible politics of the last three years,” he said.
“We need a fresh start and a fresh face to ensure this country wins the battles of the 2020s and remains prosperous for many years to come.”
‘Huge tensions’
Mr Stewart warned other candidates to tell the truth about what a no-deal Brexit would mean.
“There are huge tensions in the race,” he told Radio 4’s Today.
“People will be encouraged to promise things they can’t deliver… the most dramatic of which are people who are going to be encouraged to promise a no-deal Brexit.”
He said Parliament would simply not vote for leaving the EU without a deal and, even if the UK did leave that way, it would leave the country in a limbo.
“It is not a destination. It is a failure to reach a destination. What they are probably promising is failure, delay and endless uncertainty.”
Theresa May: How the PM fought through Brexit battles
More than a dozen more senior Conservatives are believed to be seriously considering running – including Sir Graham, who has resigned as chair of the 1922 Committee.
Most bookmakers have Mr Johnson as favourite, in front of former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab and Environment Secretary Michael Gove, who has yet to declare his hand.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd has ruled herself out, telling the BBC the party and the country wants “someone who is more enthusiastic about Brexit than I am”.
Asked who she would support, she told Radio 4’s Today she would “not malign” any of the candidates but would prefer someone who “wants to find a compromise” on Brexit and be realistic about what can be achieved”.
‘Do things differently’
Tory MPs have until the week commencing 10 June to put their name forward, and any of them can stand – as long as they have the backing of two parliamentary colleagues.
The candidates will be whittled down until two remain, and in July all party members will vote to decide on the winner.
The Conservative Party had 124,000 members, as of March last year. The last leader elected by the membership was David Cameron in 2005, as Theresa May was unopposed in 2016.
It will be the first time Conservative members have directly elected a prime minister, as opposed to a leader of the opposition.
Announcing her departure in Downing Street, Mrs May urged her successor to “seek a way forward that honours the result of the referendum” and seek “consensus” in Parliament.
Contender Mr Johnson told an economic conference in Switzerland on Friday that a new leader would have “the opportunity to do things differently”.
Outlining his Brexit position, he said: “We will leave the EU on 31 October, deal or no deal. The way to get a good deal is to prepare for a no deal.”
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell suggested Labour might need to harden its position on another Brexit referendum if the Tories elected someone willing to pursue a no-deal exit.
Mr McDonnell told Today that “some form of public vote” would definitely be needed in that situation and he would seek to talk to MPs from all parties to potentially try and bring down a government that tried to take the UK out without a deal.
Who are the Conservative members?
Most members of most parties in the UK are pretty middle-class. But Conservative Party members are the most middle-class of all: 86% fall into the ABC1 category.
Around a quarter of them are, or were, self-employed and nearly half of them work, or used to, in the private sector.
Nearly four out of 10 put their annual income at over £30,000, and one in 20 put it at over £100,000. As such, Tory members are considerably better-off than most voters.
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Theresa May: How the PM fought through Brexit battles