The leaders of UK’s devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have welcomed the announcement from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that he intends to resign as Conservative Party leader on Thursday.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the resignation would bring “a widespread sense of relief that the chaos of the last few days (indeed months) will come to an end.”
In a statement on her Twitter account, she said: “Boris Johnson was always manifestly unfit to be PM and the Tories should never have elected him leader or sustained him in office for as long as they have.”
Sturgeon, who has announced last month that she intends to hold an independence referendum next year, questioned Johnson’s plan to stay on as PM until autumn, saying it’s “far from ideal, and surely not sustainable.”
Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, said Johnson has “done the right thing.”
“All four nations need a stable UK Government and I am therefore pleased to see the Prime Minister has now done the right thing and agreed to resign,” he said.
Michelle O’Neill, who leads Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, said it was “absurd” that Johnson was allowed to stay in the office for so long.
“It has been an utter absurdity that the people here have been subjected to Boris Johnson for any length of time. He is a figure of absolute disrepute. Anyone who tries to sabotage our peace agreements, a quarter century of progress and our shared future is truly no friend of ours,” she said. Sinn Fein is the largest group in Stormont, Northern Ireland’s devolved parliament.
