Loyalist Tory MPs have gone to extreme lengths to defend Boris Johnson as his premiership looks increasingly doomed – with one backbencher accusing the BBC of making the prime minister “look like Hannibal Lecter”.
On Monday night, the Tory leader won a party led-confidence vote, though 148 of his own MPs voted to oust him. He survives for now, by the scale of the rebellion makes Johnson look like a lame duck leader.
Johnson himself hailed a “decisive” result, even though the percentage of his support among parliamentarians was lower than Theresa May’s when she faced a mutiny four years ago. May quit six months later.
In an extraordinary intervention on BBC’s Newsnight hours after the vote, Conservative MP Adam Holloway attacked the media’s portrayal of the partygate scandal – and accused the programme of altering Johnson’s image to make him appear similar to the fictional serial killer made famous by Anthony Hopkins.
He said: “There is great damage to the reputation of politics and it should also do damage to organisations like the BBC.
“This programme I am on now showed pictures of him looking like Hannibal Lecter at the beginning. I can show you here. He has razor blades.
“Does that guy look like someone who has been given a birthday cake or someone who has been locked up for something at the Old Bailey?”
Holloway ended be saying people should be thanking Johnson.
It wasn’t the only colourful language used in the fierce defence.
Holloway said voters knew Johnson was not a “Jesuit priest”, the PM did “quite brilliantly” during the pandemic because he had a baby and almost died, and that partygate “amounted to nothing factually”.
Johnson rejected the assertion that he was now a lame duck prime minister who needed to call a snap election to secure a new mandate from the public, insisting he was focused on the public’s priorities.
The scale of the revolt against Johnson’s leadership has left him vulnerable, and he could suffer further blows in two key by-elections in Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton on June 23.