LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that his victory in a confidence vote, when 41% of his lawmakers voted against him, was a convincing and decisive win that would enable the country to move on.
Having scored a sweeping election victory in 2019, the prime minister has been under mounting pressure after he and staff held alcohol-fuelled parties in his Downing Street office and residence when Britain was under strict COVID-19 lockdowns.
“I think it’s a convincing result, a decisive result and what it means is that as a government we can move on and focus on the stuff that I think really matters to people,” he told reporters.
“We can focus on what we’re doing to help people with the cost of living, what we’re doing to clear the COVID backlogs, what we’re doing to make streets and communities safer by putting more police out,” he said.
“It gives us the opportunity to continue to unite, to level up, and to strengthen our economy.”
He also said he was not interested in holding a snap national election, which some had suggested may be his next move to attempt to reassert his authority.
“I’m certainly not interested in snap elections, what I’m interested in is delivering right now for the people of this country,” he said.
(Reporting by William James and Farouq Suleiman; Editing by Kate Holton)