- Boris Johnson says being backed by 59% of his MPs in a confidence vote is a "decisive result."
- Johnson said he now has a "far bigger mandate" from his colleagues than when he became leader in 2019.
- He received 51% of the vote of MPs in the 2019 leadership contest – but out of three candidates.
Boris Johnson has welcomed narrowly surviving a leadership threat, telling broadcasters that the support of 59% of his colleagues in a vote of confidence Monday evening was "an extremely good, decisive, conclusive result".
The UK prime minister survived a confidence vote with 211 of the Conservative party's MPs voting to back Johnson and 148 voting against his leadership.
In a clip with broadcasters from Downing Street on Monday evening following the vote's announcement, Johnson said he now has a "far bigger mandate from my own Parliamentary colleagues than I had in 2019" during the contest which saw him elected leader of the Conservative party.
Johnson received 51% of the votes from Tory MPs in the final round of the leadership contest in 2019, but that was in a ballot against two other candidates, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove.
Johnson declined on several occasions to rule out holding a snap election to reinforce his mandate to lead the UK, saying he was "certainly not interested in snap elections" but instead on "delivering right now for the people of this country."
Johnson said the vote gave the government the opportunity "to put behind us all the stuff that I know the media has quite properly wanted to focus on for a very long time." The vote of confidence came after Johnson's premiership was dogged by a number of scandals, including the so-called partygate, a series of lockdown-breaching parties in Downing Street and elsewhere in government for which 126 fines were handed out by police.
Johnson was among those to receive and pay a £50 fine for attending a party held to mark his birthday.
Johnson's denials in Parliament that no rules had been broken is the subject of an investigation by the Privileges Committee as to whether he knowingly misled the House of Commons.
Johnson's remarks that the vote meant the government could move on from the partygate scandal, despite the privileges committee's probe, echo those made by a Conservative party source close to the prime minister earlier on Monday that the looming investigation was not a significant matter.
"Is there anyone here who hasn't got pissed, in their lives?" the source asked journalists when questioned if the prime minister had mentioned the investigation. "Is there anyone here who doesn't like a glass of wine to decompress?"
The leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, responded to Johnson's continuing premiership by saying that Conservative MPs "have ignored the British public and hitched themselves and their party firmly to Boris Johnson and all he represents."
Starmer said "the British public are fed up" with Johnson's government.