UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that he is "going to get on" with his job despite the largest Tory rebellion of his time in office during Tuesday's House of Commons vote on new COVID rules for England.
Johnson, who earlier warned of a "tidal wave" of Omicron, the new COVID variant , that could overwhelm health services, said he understood the "legitimate anxieties" of colleagues. He added, however, that he believes that "the approach we [the government] are taking is balanced and proportionate and right for this country".
Labour leader Keir Starmer, for his part, told lawmakers that Johnson was "the worst possible prime minister at the worst possible time" and that BoJo was "too weak to lead".
“His own MPs have had enough. They won't defend him. They won't turn up to support him. They won't vote for basic public health measures”, Starmer claimed.
BoJo Hit by Largest Tory Rebellion of His Premiership
Johnson's remarks made during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday came after at least 99 Conservative lawmakers opposed the PM's so-called Plan B on tougher COVID regulations for the country this winter that include the mandatory introduction of coronavirus health passes for large venues in England.
Senior Conservative MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, who was among the rebels, told Sky News that the Commons revolt can be seen as an indication of a "major division" within the Conservative Party and that Johnson should now "think very carefully about how he's going to reset his performance to actually govern with a united party, because we all know what happens to disunited parties".
"He [Johnson]'s got to now be in some danger and he's got to realise that, because if he doesn't realise that, then he will be in much bigger danger", Clifton-Brown asserted.
He was echoed by Charles Walker, the vice chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs, who told the BBC that the Tory rebellion was a "cry of pain from the Conservative Party".
"[…] He [Johnson] is in a very, very, very difficult position. There has been a strong view within the Conservative Party that vaccine passports do not work and is not something many colleagues wanted to see introduced. This is a very, very specific line being drawn in the sand now and I think the prime minister and his team need to listen", Walker argued.
Labour leader Keir Starmer, for his part, labelled the revolt "a very significant blow to the already damaged authority of the prime minister". "It confirms that he's too weak to discharge the basic functions of government.
These public health measures would not have gone through if Labour hadn't shown the leadership - that the prime minister failed to show - by voting in the public interest. That's what we did and it was because of our votes that these measures went through", Starmer asserted.
The developments come after Johnson came under pressure over a spate of scandals, with the latest related to a number of parties held at Downing Street in 2020 amid the coronavirus lockdown in November and December of that year.
Since the news erupted, the prime minister has repeatedly said that no rules were broken during the gatherings because he was given multiple assurances about compliance. In December, after a video showing top No 10 staffers joking about one of the alleged parties was published, the PM asked Cabinet Secretary Simon Case to launch a probe into the allegations.