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Meanwhile, a councillor from the Sutton Coldfield Conservatives, an association in a safe Tory seat which withdrew its support for Boris Johnson on Thursday, said the move reflected “local views at the very grassroots levels”.
Councillor Simon Ward told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
The conversation we had last night … was really about what I think we have the right to expect from our leaders and the standards of leadership we expect from them, and the trust that we put in them.
This is about what the right thing is for politics, what the right thing is for our leaders, how this reflects on our country as well, and it’s just massively disappointing and it reflects very, very poorly on us as a nation as well.
I have been described as a serial critic of the prime minister and, in a sense, that is true.
My letter calling for a leadership election goes back to the Barnard Castle event when the prime minister failed to take what I regarded as appropriate decisions and actions to remove [former chief aide Dominic] Cummings from office, because what happened then was quite wrong.
The problem is that the man’s judgment is flawed.
I don’t think that the image of the Downing Street branch of the Majestic Wine Warehouse is doing us any good at all.
