All eyes in parliament were on Committee Room 10 last night as Tory MPs queued up to cast their vote on Boris Johnson’s premiership. Between 6:00 p.m to 8:00 p.m they trooped in and out, with Johnson himself turning up shortly after 7:00 p.m to confirm that he does, in fact, still retain confidence in himself as leader. The PM was flanked by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace – a favourite among the grassroots to succeed him – and his own Parliamentary Secretary Joy Morrissey.
Earlier in the day Johnson had made a last-ditch appeal to Conservative MPs at the 1922 committee, making a series of pledges across a range of areas, including on ‘family budgets’. He asked the assembled Tories ‘Why should the cost of childcare be pushed up by unnecessary rules on child-minding?’ So it was with some irony that Morrissey ended up being roped into childminding later that night after Johnson loyalist Mark Jenkinson brought along his kids to the vote, where they were barred from entering.
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