2022 UK political crisis
The 2022 UK political crisis was a political crisis in the United Kingdom. Caused by the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron on June 6th 2022 amidst mounting scandals implicating the ruling Conservative government, it saw the collapse of the nearly twelve-year-long Cameron administration, which was subsequently replaced by a new Conservative administration led by former Minister of State for Development, Justine Greening, which began on June 6th 2022.
On May 25th 2022, a report by British civil servant, Sue Gray, dubbed the "Sue Gray report" was published, severely implicating high-ranking members of the Conservative government led by Prime Minister David Cameron. Prior to this, the Prime Minister and his cabinet members have been urged to resign by a number of MPs as a result of the political scandal, known officially as Partygate, in which members of both the government and the Conservative Party, were revealed to have breached various health safety protocols through a series of parties and gatherings held during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Then, beginning in early 2022, a number of MPs were reported to have begun submitting letters of no confidence, hoping to eventually force a vote of no confidence against the prime minister, whom would henceforth require support from a majority of MPs to survive a hypothetical no-confidence vote. Meanwhile, on May 28th, Markus Thierse, the leader of the Hanoverian Union Party, which had been a junior coalition partner of the Conservative Party announced his party's withdrawal from the coalition, thereby bringing the government's total seats in the House of Commons down from 418 to 391 seats. Prior to this, on June 23rd, two by-elections took place, with the Conservatives losing to both their Labour and Liberal Democrats rivals respectively.
On that same day, not long after the publishing of the report, Cameron announced that he would be officially stepping down as prime minister, thereby ending his nearly twelve-year-long time in office. Soon, a leadership contest within the Conservative Party was triggered, which saw approximately fifteen members of the Conservative Party, all of whom were largely members of David Cameron's cabinet, competing for the soon-to-be vacant leadership spot. Eventually, on June 5th 2022, then-Minister of State for Development, Justine Greening, was chosen as the new leader of the Conservative Party, having triumphantly defeated four of her rivals in the final round. The following day, Greening was subsequently sworn in as the new prime minister, while then-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Harriett Baldwin, in addition to her ministerial portfolio, concurrently took office as deputy prime minister. Meanwhile, out of the other three Great Offices of State, excluding the office of Prime Minister itself, only David Gauke and Victoria Atkins retained their current position as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary, while the incumbent Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, presumably in response to the fall of Kabul to Taliban forces in 2021, otherwise had his ministerial post usurped by Greening herself, whom therefore effectively holds a dual role as both prime minister and foreign secretary.