Boris Johnson praises ‘extremely good’ result and calls for party to move on

Prime minister says no-confidence vote result was 'very good result for politics and for country'

Prime Minister Boris Johnson after surviving the no-confidence vote on Monday. PA

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted he had secured a “decisive” victory despite a confidence vote in which 148 of his own MPs tried to oust him.

Tory MPs voted by 211 to 148 in support of the prime minister but the scale of the revolt against his leadership leaves him wounded.

After the result of the no-confidence vote, Mr Johnson said: "I think this is a very good result for politics and for the country.

"In this sense I think it’s a convincing result, a decisive result and what it means is that as a government we can move on and focus on the stuff that I think really matters to people.

"I got a far bigger mandate from my own parliamentary colleagues, for instance, than I had in 2019 and I’m grateful to colleagues, I’m grateful for the support they’ve given me."

He called on his party to reunite.

"I understand that what we need to do now is come together as a government, as a party, and that is exactly what we can now do," Mr Johnson said.

“And what this gives us is the opportunity to put behind us all the stuff that I know the media have quite properly wanted to focus on for a very long time, and to do our job, which is to focus on the stuff that I think the public actually want us to be talking about, which is what we are doing to help the people in this country and all the things we’re doing to take this country forward.

"And so what this means tonight is that we can focus on exactly that.

"We can focus on what we’re doing to help people with the cost of living, with what we’re doing to … make streets and communities safer by putting more police out, and it gives us the opportunity to continue to unite, to level up, to strengthen our economy."

Mr Johnson acknowledged that there are tough times ahead for the country.

“We’re going to go through a continuing difficult time because of the inflationary pressures that the world is experiencing, but we have a lot of a lot of natural strength, not least the lowest unemployment since 1974," he said.

“What I think is important about tonight, and you know, forgive me what I’m going to say it again, I think this is very good news, because it allows the government to focus on on those issues.

“I certainly think it is [a good result] because don’t forget that when I first stood to be leader of the Conservative Party in 2019, I didn’t get anything like that much support from my colleagues in Parliament.

“What we have now is an opportunity to put behind us all the stuff, as I say, that people in the media like going on about.

"I think there’s a difference in the category of conversation. I know that, you know, people want to talk about stuff that goes on at Westminster.

"What I want to talk about is what we as a government are doing … what we’re going to do now is take the opportunity to unite and deliver."

When asked if he was ruling out a snap election, Mr Johnson replied: “I certainly have no, I see no point in focusing on anything else.

“And I’m certainly not interested in, in snap elections. What I’m interested in, is delivering right now for the people of this country.

“We’ve got an amazing agenda, we have a fantastic mandate, a huge … biggest majority we secured in 2019 … the Conservatives for 40 years.

“If you look at what’s just happened in Parliament, in whatever statistics you want to chuck around, I’ve got many more MPs supporting me now than I did in 2019.

“I’m happy with that. We’re gonna bash on, we have a huge agenda and we’re gonna get it done.

“I think the most important thing, although you may want to focus on me, and on politics, and on Westminster, I think what matters is what we deliver, what we do.

“And as a result of this decision tonight by the Parliamentary party, which I welcome, we have a conclusion to something that has been dragging on for far too long.

"And we have the ability now to unite, deliver and get on with the people’s priorities, and that is what we’re going to do.”

Mr Johnson was also asked if he thought the vote had returned a good result considering he was in a worse position than Theresa May was after her vote in 2018.

“I think it’s an extremely good, positive, conclusive, decisive result which enables us to move on, to unite and to focus on delivery," he said.

"That is exactly what we’re going to do."