Nigel Farage Warns Boris Johnson May Be Out ‘Sooner Than Anybody Thinks’

Kurt Zindulka

Prime Minister Boris Johnson may be out of office “sooner than almost anybody thinks” according to Brexit leader Nigel Farage.

Over the past month, the future of Boris Johnson’s leadership has been thrown into question in the wake of an embarrassing election defeat to the Liberal Democrats in the North Shropshire parliamentary by-election and a large rebellion from within his own party against the latest round of coronavirus restrictions.

Mr Johnson was dealt another blow on Saturday after it emerged that a key Cabinet member, Brexit negotiator Lord David Frost had resigned from his post over the government’s high-tax, green-focussed Build Back Better agenda, and the push for the introduction of COVID passports in England.

Commenting on the resignation of Lord Frost on Sunday evening, Nigel Farage hailed the former Brexit negotiator for actually believing in the cause of the UK’s independence from the European Union as opposed to the PM, whom he accused of supporting Brexit for cynical careerist motivations.

While Mr Farage acknowledged that previous political leaders in Britain, such as former Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher faced similar threats to their leadership, he noted that at least Mrs Thatcher had a clear ideological vision, with supporters of her conservative agenda.

Johnson, on the other hand, has the problem of not “actually believing in anything,” the arch Brexiteer claimed.

“He needs to decide pretty much immediately what he stands for [and] get a team of loyal folk around him, otherwise I think this governmental disintegration will continue and you know what he might be gone sooner than almost anybody thinks,” Farage warned.

On top of internal political strife, the prime minister is also facing public widespread criticism over apparent breaches of his own lockdown policies last year after pictures emerged of a Downing Street Christmas party and a wine and cheese gathering in May of 2020, which the government has claimed was merely a “work meeting”.

Though rumours have swirled in the press about Johnson’s potential political downfall, it remains to be seen if a leadership challenge would be successful.

Indeed, Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, was able to cling to power despite challenges to her leadership over her failures to deliver Brexit. May was also in a much more precarious position than Johnson after losing the Conservative majority in the House of Commons with her calling of a snap General Election in 2017, leaving her leadership dependent on a coalition with the Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

May survived attempts to topple her government in a no-confidence vote, as well as attempts from within her own party to alter the party rules to oust her, and even a Conservative grassroots effort to trigger their own vote of no confidence for the first time in the Tory Party history.

The former prime minister was ultimately forced to resign after failing to come to a Brexit agreement with the European Union that could pass the House of Commons. Many also pointed to her disastrous electoral defeat in the 2019 European Parliament elections, when the Conservatives came in fifth place, losing out to the Nigel Farage-led Brexit Party, representing the second minister to fall at the hands of Mr Farage after David Cameron’s defeat in the 2016 EU Referendum.

While Mr Farage stepped aside from frontline politics earlier this year in favour of pursuing a prime time television spot on GB News, the Brexiteer has warned that he might be forced into a return to the political to confront Mr Johnson’s failures to tackle the illegal migrant crisis in the English Channel.

In contrast to Mrs May, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a large Conservative majority in the House of Commons after securing a landslide victory over Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the 2019 general election, making any move against his leadership a much more difficult task than the attempts against May.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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