UK PM Johnson won’t face confidence vote this week as lawmakers await committee elections

LONDON (Reuters) – A new confidence vote in British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be brought by his lawmakers until at least next week, after the Conservative Party committee governing the rules agreed to elect a new executive before considering allowing one.

The so-called 1922 Committee decided on Wednesday it would hold an election to its executive on Monday, before deciding whether to change the rules to bring forward a confidence vote in Johnson, three Conservative lawmakers said.

That new executive of the committee, which oversees any confidence vote in a Conservative Party leader, will then decide whether to change the rules to bring forward such a vote, which currently cannot take place until next year, the lawmakers said.

Johnson survived a confidence vote on June 6 in which 41% of his lawmakers cast ballots against his leadership. As the rules stand, he cannot face another such vote for 12 months.

Conservative lawmaker Alec Shelbrooke said nominations for the new committee would open on Wednesday and close on Monday. There would then would be a vote on Monday afternoon and the new executive would be announced that evening.

“The view of the current executive is it would be unfair to change rules until they’d be electing a new executive,” Shelbrooke told reporters.

“So they’re expediting the elections to be done by Monday evening. And then they will discuss it.”

Asked how soon a decision on rule changes could happen after that, he said he didn’t know and didn’t want to speculate.

The decision contradicts some earlier reports that the rules would be changed to allow a new confidence vote in Johnson this week. A member of the current executive told Reuters earlier that a rule change would look bad unless the committee had a new mandate.

However, Johnson may still be forced to resign before next week if more members of his cabinet quit.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Alistair Smout and Andrew MacAskill, Editing by Kylie MacLellan)