UK's Johnson continues fight for political life

The United Kingdom's prime minister is so fixated on saving his political career he is effectively asleep at the wheel of the nation, the leader of the country's largest opposition party has claimed.

Keir Starmer, who heads the Labour Party, said Boris Johnson's promise to shake up the way his office is run is aimed at saving his job, not introducing efficiency and accountability.

Starmer said on the BBC's Breakfast television program on Tuesday Johnson is wrong to think voters will be distracted from his alleged breaches of the country's novel coronavirus lockdown rules, which were the subject of a report published this week, and that are being probed by the police.

"So many people are worried about issues such as their energy bills, which are going through the roof, and the prime minister is spending all of his time saving his own skin," Starmer said.

He insisted senior bureaucrat Sue Gray's report, which spoke of a "failure of leadership" at the top of the UK government, should spell the end of Johnson's time in office.

But the prime minister has continued to say he thought functions he attended during lockdowns were work events, and that he is the right man to run the country.

He appeared before lawmakers from his ruling Conservative Party on Monday evening to put his case, and ask them not to launch a leadership challenge.

Dominic Raab, the UK's deputy prime minister, said on Radio 4's Today program on Tuesday that the prime minister had "expressed contrition" at the meeting and admitted "his overall responsibility" for lockdown breaches, which included parties at 10 Downing Street.

Later, Raab said on Times Radio he thinks Johnson did enough to avoid a challenge from within the party.

He said: "Overwhelmingly, MPs are backing him, wanting to see us getting on with the job."

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a senior Conservative Party lawmaker, said on the Today program Johnson "recognized that, as Sue Gray said, the standards expected in No 10 were not as they should have been".

He insisted Johnson took "responsibility and … apologized" while also offering a "plan of action".

Gray's report, which was released on Monday, was an abridged account of her investigation into alleged lockdown partying within the government because the police had asked her to shelve the detailed version, pending a criminal investigation into the events.

Mark Harper, who was formerly the Conservative Party's chief whip, a job devoted to ensuring internal discipline, told The Guardian he wants Johnson to publicly commit to publishing Gray's report in full, once that is allowed.

Several Conservative Party lawmakers have said they will wait for the publication of the full report before deciding whether to support a leadership challenge.

The anti-Johnson faction needs 54 lawmakers from the party's 359 members of Parliament to submit "letters of no confidence" in his leadership to trigger a challenge.

While several lawmakers are delaying decisions on whether to withdraw their support, The Guardian newspaper noted many others have gone on record as saying Johnson should resign.

Andrew Mitchell, a former international development secretary, said the scandal, known to many as Partygate, has become "more corrosive" than previous outrages that rocked the party.

"I think the problem is that Boris is running a modern government like a medieval court," The Guardian quoted him as saying.