Swindon MPs split on whether Boris Johnson should stay or go

North Swindon MP Justin Tomlinson, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, has remained staunchly loyal to the embattled Prime Minister.

But South Swindon’s Robert Buckland, who had previously been a backer of Mr Johnson, has called for him to go.

Sir Robert, who was Justice Secretary in Mr Johnson’s cabinet until September 2021, told the Daily Telegraph: “The PM no longer has my support. I think that the events of the last few days have only served to heighten the increasingly unrealistic situation in which we find ourselves.

"The office of Prime Minister depends on several factors: integrity, honesty, and straightforwardness.

"And if those attributes are no longer clear or no longer operable, then I'm afraid that the person in office has to go. And it's on that basis I think that now is the time for the Prime Minister to step down. We need to seek an alternative as soon as possible."

He said it may be possible that backbenchers could force the PM’s resignation without another formal vote of no confidence: "I'm hearing that Graham [Brady, the chairman of the party’s MPs 1922 Committee] has basically got the instruments of torture ready and he's able to display I think, to the prime minister or those around him that they've got the letters and they've got the mechanism which they can deploy.

"It seems to me it is becoming increasingly obvious that this can't go on."

As more than 30 MPs resigned from the government in just two days, Mr Tomlinson was one who decided to stay on and support the PM.

He did not respond to a request for comment from the LDR but BBC Wiltshire’s political report Dan O’Brien tweeted: “North Swindon's MP and deputy Tory chair Justin Tomlinson remains loyal to the PM praising his work on Covid and Ukraine and adds "the country rightly now expects us to focus on the cost of living challenge, not internal endless debate".”

Mr Tomlinson is in a minority of Swindon and Wiltshire MPs remaining supportive of the prime minister.

Chippenham MP Michelle Donelan was promoted to the cabinet by Mr Johnson, taking the role of Education Secretary after Nadim Zahawi was made Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Devizes MP Danny Kruger has not commented but has stayed on in his post as PPS at the department for Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

But North Wiltshire’s James Gray  said of Mr Johnson: “I think he is finished” and Andrew Murrison of South West Wiltshire and John Glen MP for Salisbury both resigned from their government posts.