Thirsk, Malton and Filey MP: 'Boris Johnson's victory wasn't strong'

Kevin Hollinrake voted FOR the Prime Minister but 148 of his fellow Tory MPs didn't

Author: Karen LiuPublished 7th Jun 2022

The MP for Thirsk, Malton and Filey says there is a lot of work to be done after last night's vote of confidence in Boris Johnson.

Kevin Hollinrake voted FOR the Prime Minister but 148 of his fellow Tory MPs did not.

That amounts to more than a third and comes after the recent publication of Sue Gray's report into Downing Street parties during lockdown.

Kevin said: "Are those breaches serious enough for a Prime Minister to resign? The leader of a nation that's at a very difficult time and mind you it still is but we haven't reached that point and therefore, I think we should carry on with the Prime Minister, show loyalty to him and get this show back on the road.

"We're not in a good place. I don't think the vote last night was some kind of unbridled success for the Prime Minister. It was much tighter than many expected and I think there's a big job to do to restore confidence amongst parliamentarians and the general public.

"148 colleagues said 'you're not the right person to lead your organisation' and in this case, it's the country and it's pretty serious. We shouldn't take that lightly and simply move on expecting to not to learn lessons from that. The Prime Minister has committed to learning the lessons of it and one thing I would say about the Prime Minister, is that he has incredible bounce back ability.

Kevin added that if those who called for the vote had waited the result could have been a different one: "The polls don't look very good and we could lose the by-elections we've got coming up on the 23rd June in Wakefield, Honiton and Tiverton and that would be a bigger platform potentially for the rebels to utilise."

Kevin Hollinrake has been speaking to Greatest Hits Radio's Jon Burke:

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