Tory members think Boris Johnson should return as PM despite literally everything
Boris Johnson. (AFP via Getty/ ADRIAN DENNIS)
Even after the absolute chaos of Boris Johnson’s premiership, a majority of Tory members have said they’d like to see him return as prime minister.
After just six weeks in the role, it seems as if Liz Truss will be short-lived as prime minister.
According to a new YouGov survey, 55 per cent of Conservative party members want to see Truss resign immediately, including 39 per cent of those who voted her in as leader. Just 38 per cent of party members believe she should remain in post.
Those numbers may be unsurprising after Truss plunged the UK into economic turmoil, before firing chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and replacing him with Jeremy Hunt, who immediately U-turned on almost all of the offending mini-budget.
But what is truly shocking is that 63 per cent of Tory party members say Johnson should return in Truss’ place, with 32 per cent listing him as their top choice and 23 per cent saying Rishi Sunak should have the job.
Boris Johnson left a terrible legacy on LGBTQ+ rights
Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister left a sour taste in the mouth of many British people, none more so than the LGBTQ+ community.
Despite his claims that he supports queer people, Johnson has repeatedly refused to apologise for notoriously referring to gay men as “tank-topped bum boys” in a 1998 Telegraph column about gay MP Peter Mandelson, and his time in power suggested that little had changed.
Under Johnson, the Tories ditched meaningful reforms to the Gender Recognition Act in favour of digitising the process for legal gender recognition and reducing the fee, made it even harder for LGBTQ+ people to seek safety in the UK with their Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and abandoned a legislative ban on conversion therapy before U-turning and clarifying that only trans people would not be protected under a ban.
Johnson used trans rights as a political football, even as anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes skyrocketed, and the UK plummeted down LGBTQ+ advocacy group IGLA-Europe’s rankings of LGBTQ-friendly nations from first to 14th place.
But if Truss resigns, it seems as though even Conservative party members don’t want to have a say in who should replace her.
According to the YouGov survey, party members agreed that another Tory leadership race would not go down well with the public, but a shocking 60 per cent said they believed that a leader should be chosen by MPs without an election.
