Boris Johnson’s no-confidence vote: PM tells cabinet to ‘draw a line’ under Partygate after narrowly surviving bruising ballot – live

Tory chief whip at Holyrood says he doesn’t know how long ‘damaged’ PM can continue in office

Libby Brooks

After four out of six Scottish Tory MPs – including Scottish leader Douglas Ross – voted against Boris Johnson in last night’s confidence vote, the party’s chief whip at Holyrood, Stephen Kerr, had no comfort for the prime minister when he spoke to BBC Scotland this morning.

Kerr told Good Morning Scotland that “undoubtedly [Johnson] is damaged”, adding: “I don’t know how long the prime minister can continue.”

His words – which are believed to reflect the majority of opinion amongst Scottish Tory MSPs – go against a plea for unity from Scottish secretary Alister Jack, who said it was time to move on from debates about Johnson’s leadership.

But the vote has once again highlighted the inconsistency of Ross’s position . He was one of the most senior Tories to call for Johnson’s resignation when reports initially surfaced of Downing Street parties, he then withdrew his letter demanding a no-confidence vote, stating that the war in Ukraine required stable government, and while he did not resubmit it he went on the vote against Johnson when the vote was eventually triggered on Monday.

Kerr insisted that there was no flip-flopping involved. Defending Ross, he said:

Douglas has been consistent in terms of the principle – he made it clear from the outset that he had huge doubts about the conduct of the prime minister …

It was only when circumstances changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine that he said there are some things right now we need to set aside.

Scottish Tories are well aware of the impact of the prime minister’s unpopularity in Scotland after local council elections where their vote plunged to its worst for a decade, pushing them back into third place behind Scottish Labour.

Boris Johnson used his opening address to cabinet this morning to seek to draw a line under Partygate. PA Media has his words, and he tried to flesh out the line in the press notice issued early this morning (see 9.41am) about how the government is now focusing on “what the people of this country care about most”. Here are the main points.

• Johnson claimed yesterday’s vote was “very important” because it meant the government could now “draw a line” under Partygate. He said:

It was a very important day because we are able now to draw a line under the issues that our opponents want to talk about and we are able to get on talking about the issues, what the issues that I think the people want … and what we are doing to help them and to take the country forward. That is what we are going to do. We are going to focus exclusively on that.

• He claimed the government had a “massive agenda” for change. He said:

We are going to get on with the massive agenda that we were elected to deliver in 2019.

It is a huge, huge thing that we are all part off, to really transform infrastructure, skills and technology, uniting and levelling up across the country, unleashing potential across the whole of the UK.

It is the totally morally, socially, economically, politically the right thing to do and we should be proud, proud, proud of what we’re doing.

• He said he wanted ministers to focus on “cutting the costs of government”. Arguing that the government was making a “huge investment” in public services, he said:

But it’s not enough just to spend money. We have got to spend it wisely.

We as Conservative ministers, we have got to make sure at every stage that we are driving reform and driving value.

So what I’m going to ask you all to do in each of your departments is make sure that you’re thinking the whole time about cutting the costs of government, about cutting the costs that business has to face and of course cutting the costs that everybody else faces, families up and down the country.

But he also said ministers should come up with ideas for public service reform too.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to ask everybody to come forward with ways in which we can, as I say, cut costs, drive reform and make sure that we understand that in the end, it is people who have the best feel for how to spend their own money rather than the government or the state.

And that is our fundamental, Conservative instinct and that way, I think we will be able to get on with our agenda, making this the most prosperous, the most successful economy in Europe.

• But he also said organisations like the Passport Office and the DVLA had to be more efficient. “I think in particular people deserve to get their passport and their driving licence just as much as they deserve to get their test, their scan or their screen on time, promptly and we’ve got to focus on that,” he said.

• He claimed the government could deliver tax cuts in the future. He said:

We will have the scope, by delivering tax cuts, I think, to deliver considerable growth in employment and economic growth.

Johnson and other ministers like talking up Tory proposals that would cut tax, but overall the tax burden has risen considerably under his premiership.

Here is a summary of the main points from Dominic Raab’s interviews this morning.

• Raab, the justice secretary and deputy first minister, urged the Tory rebels to accept the result of last night’s vote. (See 9.23am.) He told LBC:

I think we draw a line in the sand after this vote, it was clearly and decisively won.

• He claimed the party could unite around its policy agenda. He said:

There’s a huge amount, when you look at our policy agenda that binds us together, that’s the way it is in the Conservative party.

And I think the best forward – momentum – will be to focus on that, because that’s the stuff that the people in the country, from the towns to the shires and the suburbs and everywhere in between, want us focused on.

This claim ignores the fact that, for some MPs who voted against Boris Johnson yesterday, policy differences were importance, and not just Pargygate. See, for example, what Jesse Norman, the former Treasury minister, said in his open letter explaining why he could not back the PM.

• Raab rejected claims that Johnson was in a worse position than Theresa May in December 2018. The May comparison was cited by many people last night because 37% of May’s MPs voted against her in a no-confidence motion and she resigned six months later. Yesterday 41% of Tory MPs voted against Johnson. But his position was different, Raab argued. He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

We won the biggest majority since 1987 in 2019, and that’s very different from, for example, the situation Theresa May found herself in because there was a hung parliament.

• He said that if the Tories were to lose the two byelections later this month, in Wakefield and in Tiverton and Honiton, that would not mean defeat at the general election was inevitable. He explained:

By-elections are often an opportunity for a protest vote in a way that a general election isn’t. Governments of the day often lose by-elections to go on to win them at a general election.

He stressed that the party was doing everything it could to win both byelections, but it sounded as if was conceding that defeat was more likely.

My colleague Martin Farrer has a round-up of how the national papers are covering the no-confidence vote yesterday. The Daily Mail and the Daily Express have a pro-Johnson gloss on their splash coverage, but elsewhere the coverage is much more negative for No 10, and even the Daily Telegraph, Johnson’s former employer and a paper he values so much he used to call it his “real boss”, provides little comfort.

Rebel Conservatives have given Boris Johnson until the party conference to change direction or they warn rules could be altered to allow another challenge, my colleague Jessica Elgot reports.

Good morning. We like to think that elections and votes can resolve political disputes, and provide an element of closure. It is one of the reasons journalists cover them so intensely. But, of course, sometimes they don’t, and last night’s no-confidence ballot in Boris Johnson’s leadership is a classic example. Tory MPs hoped that, one way or another, it would terminate the crisis. Yet it hasn’t, and Johnson’s dysfunctional government psychodrama is back for another season.

Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, was doing the interview round this morning and he urged Johnson’s opponents in the party to respect the result and move on. He told Sky News:

The prime minister won it with 59%, that is actually more than he got in terms of support when he was elected leader of the Conservative party.

But we have had that vote now, I think it was the prerogative of those calling for it to have it, the prime minister won it clearly, he won it by 63 votes … and now the most important thing I think is to respect that result and to move forward.

Raab is a former foreign secretary. But another former foreign secretary, William Hague, who is also a former Tory leader, and someone who was in parliament when Margaret Thatcher and John Major were facing leadership challenges, has come to a different conclusion. In his column in the Times, Hague says that Johnson’s position is now untenable and that he should quit. He says:

While I never faced a vote of no confidence in my four years as opposition leader, I would have regarded my position as completely untenable if more than a third of my MPs had ever voted against me. John Major was entirely ready to resign in 1995 if he had not won the support of a very large majority of the party. If, with all the power of the party leadership, all the years of acquaintance with MPs, all the knowledge they have of your abilities and plans, you still cannot crush a vote of no confidence by a commanding margin, then not only is the writing on the wall but it is chiselled in stone and will not wash away …

No individual in politics matters more than the health of our democracy. That health depends on voters having faith in the integrity of leaders even if they disagree with them, respect for how government is conducted, and a competitive choice at a future election. The votes just cast show that a very large part of the Conservative party cannot see Johnson providing that.

Hague also argues that there are two sorts of rebellions against a party leader. Major and Theresa May both faced attempted coups by organised factions with an agenda. But the anti-Johnson campaign was “more disparate, less organised but more spontaneous”, triggered by the fact that many different groups in the party have lost faith in him. A rebellion of this sort brought down Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, Hague says. He goes on:

The nature of their revolt has an important bearing on what happens next. They are not a faction that has been seen off, or an alternative policy direction that has been defeated. They represent instead a widespread feeling, a collapse of faith, that almost certainly cannot be repaired or reversed. For Johnson, continuing to lead the party after such a revolt will prove to be unsustainable.

Hague says Johnson should accept that he can’t recover and resign.

While Johnson has survived the night, the damage done to his premiership is severe. Words have been said that cannot be retracted, reports published that cannot be erased, and votes have been cast that show a greater level of rejection than any Tory leader has ever endured and survived. Deep inside, he should recognise that, and turn his mind to getting out in a way that spares party and country such agonies and uncertainties.

I will be covering more reaction to last night’s vote throughout the day.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet.

10am: Lord Frost, the former Brexit minister, gives evidence to the Commons public administration and constitutional affairs committee.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, holds a Q&A at the Institute for Government thinktank.

After 12.30pm: MPs begin debating a Labour motion saying the government should implement in full Committee on Standards in Public Life proposals to beef up the ministerial code.

4.45pm: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, gives evidence to the Commons health committee about staffing in the NHS.

I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Alternatively, you can email me at andrew.sparrow@theguardian.com.