BRITISH PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON RESIGNS

Thu 07 July 2022:

In response to requests from members of his Conservative Party and ministerial colleagues, Boris Johnson announced on Thursday that he was stepping down as prime minister of Great Britain.

Below is the opening text of a speech he made outside his official Downing Street residence announcing his resignation:

“It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative Party that there should be a new leader of that party and therefore a new prime minister, and I’ve agreed with Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of our backbench MPs, that the process of choosing that new leader should begin now and the timetable will be announced next week. And I’ve today appointed a cabinet to serve, as I will, until the new leader is in place.”

“So I want to say to the millions of people who voted for us in 2019, many of them voting Conservative for the first time: ‘Thank you for that incredible mandate, the biggest Conservative majority since 1987, the biggest share of the vote since 1979.’

“And the reason I have fought so hard in the last few days to continue to deliver that mandate in person was not just because I wanted to do so, but because I felt it was my job, my duty, my obligation to you to continue to do what we promised in 2019.

“And of course, I’m immensely proud of the achievements of this government: from getting Brexit done to settling our relations with the continent for over half a century. Reclaiming the power for this country to make its own laws in parliament, getting us all through the pandemic, delivering the fastest vaccine rollout in Europe, the fastest exit from lockdown, and in the last few months, leading the West in standing up to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.”

The timetable for a Tory leadership race will be announced next week, he said, after three tumultuous years in office defined by Brexit, the Covid pandemic and non-stop controversy over his reputation for mendacity.

The leadership election will take place over the summer and the victor will replace Johnson at the party’s annual conference in early October, the BBC and others reported.

He said he was “sad… to be giving up the best job in the world” and justified fighting on in the final hours to deliver the mandate he won in a general election in December 2019.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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