Speaking in what could be his final Prime Minister’s Questions as UK premier, Boris Johnson told MPs that he would look back on his time in Number 10 with his “head held high.”
Johnson said: “It's perfectly true that I leave not at the time of my choosing. And it's absolutely true...I'm proud of the leadership that I have given...I will be leaving soon with my head held high.”
A reflective Johnson talked up some of his achievements in power, namely getting Brexit done, starting projects to level-up and improve UK infrastructure and standing up for Ukraine in the wake of Russian aggression.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer focused his questions on taxation, asking the prime minister to justify some of the pledges made by the candidates to succeed him.
Referring to “£330 billion in giveaways” pledged by the Tory leadership candidates, Sir Keir said: “That is double the budget of the NHS. Does the PM agree they should explain where the cash comes from?”
Adopting a defensive stance, Johnson praised the commitments made by the candidates, highlighting that the government would hire more police offers and build 40 new hospitals, the funding for which he said Labour voted against.
The SNP’s leader in Westminster, Ian Blackford, quizzed Johnson on his refusal to endorse any candidates in the leadership contest, saying: “Is the reason the PM won’t endorse any of these awful candidates because the next leader will make Genghis Khan look like a moderate?”
The prime minister responded that he hoped his successor would look to uphold the union and was again dismissive of the idea of a second Scottish independence referendum when asked about the matter by SNP MPs.
Responding to Blackford’s suggestion that Scottish voters wanted rid of “the whole rotten Westminster system” rather than Johnson alone, the PM said that the UK government was increasing cost-of-living support for households and that the Scottish people did not want “more constitutional wrangling when we need to fix the economy”.
This came after Alba MPs Neale Hanvey and Kenny MacAskill were ordered out of the chamber at the start of the session by Commons speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, and subsequently suspended from the House. The duo were reprimanded after protesting the government’s refusal to grant a Section 30 order to enable indyref2.
During the session, Johnson also informed the chamber that the government would table its own motion to MPs to ask them whether they have confidence in the government, after Labour failed in a bid to have its own confidence motion heard in the Commons.
The government’s motion is expected to be debated in Parliament next week, according to reports.
Should the government lose, it could force a general election, however this outcome is unlikely owing to the large Conservative majority in the Commons and the fact that a leadership contest is already underway to replace the PM.
A government spokesman separately told the media: “The government will always allow time for appropriate House matters whilst ensuring that it delivers parliamentary business to help improve people's everyday lives.”
Photo by UK Government on Wikimedia Commons
