“An almost endless procession of scandals have chipped away at Johnson’s authority since he won that historic majority of 80 seats in the 2019 general election — from his disastrous handling of the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, to revelations about dodgy deals funding luxury renovations to his Downing Street flat. The rot really started to set in with a series of stories about boozy parties held in No. 10, including some attended by the prime minister himself, in breach of pandemic lockdown rules.
Last month Johnson narrowly survived a leadership challenge. Some 41 percent of Tories voted to remove him. He went on to lead his party to two more disastrous by-election defeats, triggering the party chairman to resign.
In recent days, Johnson’s mishandling of sexual assault allegations against the former Tory Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher proved too much for many of his colleagues. The PM’s story kept changing, and loyal ministers found themselves inadvertently misleading the public by repeating inaccurate Downing Street lines on the scandal.
On Tuesday night, just two minutes after Johnson apologized for his mistakes, Sajid Javid quit as health secretary. Nine minutes after that, Chancellor Rishi Sunak, the second most powerful figure in government, resigned. Their double bombshell burst the dam and a deluge of other ministers quit in the hours that followed.”
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“Johnson is aiming to stay on as a caretaker prime minister, while the Conservative Party holds an election for a replacement – a process likely to take up most of the next two months.
But there are growing signs that his internal party critics want him gone immediately.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-watch-tory-leadership-crisis-like-pro/