The former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed that he has pulled out of the race to succeed Liz Truss as Britain’s prime minister on Sunday evening which had thereby ended a quixotic bid which had been made to reclaim a job which he had reportedly lost three months ago amid a cascade of scandals thereby leaving his rival, Rishi Sunak, in a commanding position to be the country’s next leader.
The result of the contest is going to be kept private until Monday afternoon at the earliest, and there is still room for some further twists as well.
Reports have also had it that Boris Johnson did not endorse Mr. Sunak, and another ambitious candidate, Penny Mordaunt who has remained in the hunt. But Mr. Johnson’s withdrawal thereby removes much of the suspense which is coming from a race that was shaping up as an epic battle between the former prime minister and his onetime chancellor.
Mr. Johnson said he believed he had a path to victory, even though the BBC estimated he had lined up the public support of only 57 Conservative lawmakers. It was well short of the threshold of 100 required to be on the ballot, though he claimed he had 102 votes.
Whatever the case, he said in a statement, “I have sadly come to the conclusion that this would simply not be the right thing to do.”
Mr. Johnson, 58, said he did not believe that he could govern effectively without a unified Conservative Party in Parliament. Despite what he said were his efforts to reach out to Mr. Sunak and Ms. Mordaunt to create some kind of unity ticket, “we have sadly not been able to work out a way to do this.”
Mr. Johnson’s departure ends a feverish three days following Ms. Truss’s resignation in which he once again gripped public attention and dominated the political conversation. But his campaign never really gained momentum. Party leaders threw their support behind Mr. Sunak as a better option to try to unify a divided party and put the chaos of the last few months — much of it caused by Mr. Johnson — behind it.