In the final hours before Boris Johnson’s resignation on 7 July, as he was still clinging desperately to power, a source close to the Prime Minister outlined the argument he was making to cabinet ministers as to why he should be allowed to stay in office. “He has been spelling out to them that 14 million people voted for him,” the unnamed source told the BBC. Removing him now, the person said, would be to ignore that overwhelming mandate.
That is not how British elections work. Under the UK’s parliamentary system, as Johnson well knows, individual voters cast their ballots to elect their local member of parliament (MP) to the House of Commons. The party with the most seats generally forms the government, with its leader then becoming the prime minister. The only people who directly voted for Boris Johnson in the 2019 general election were the 25,351 residents of Uxbridge and South Ruislip who chose him to represent them, but even then only as their local constituency MP.
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