- Monday, January 13, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Britain is set to get a new prime minister in the first week of September but a new research has shown that at least 49 per cent of the ruling Conservative Party’s supporters still wish that Boris Johnson, the outgoing premier, was in the race and preferred him to both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, the two contenders who are in an intense battle to succeed him.
According to one report, interviews of voters in the marginalised constituencies felt that the Tory parliamentarians hurt the party’s reputation by ousting Johnson, who quit in early July after his government fell apart over controversies and resignations.
Richard, a plumber from the marginal seat of Southampton Itchen, told the Daily Mail, “The others have not had to deal with everything he’s had to. He stepped straight in and it was Brexit and then it was Covid and now it’s the war in Ukraine. Everybody waffles on about it, he should have done this, he should have done that. But I’d like to see them in his shoes.”
Another voter in Greater Manchester, said, “Whether he would fail or succeed, we’ll never know now, but he should have been given the opportunity.”
A third voter also expressed disappointment over Boris’s ouster, saying, “I really liked Boris and I was really, really disappointed in the way he was treated. They’re picking on minor things.”
Meanwhile, Truss was taking a firm lead over Sunak in the race but the latter said he was excited to keep going with his leadership campaign in the Conservative Party.
Last week, a new YouGov poll for Sky News showed Truss, the foreign secretary, took a 32-point lead over Sunak, the former finance minister. Other surveys of Tory members, who will vote in this election, have also shown a similar tilt in favour of Truss.
