British Prime Minister Boris Johnson survived a vote of no-confidence on Monday after members of his Conservative Party sought his departure in the wake of criticism about him attending parties amid a lockdown, Reuters reported.

The motion was introduced after 54 Conservative Party MPs demanded that Johnson resign as he and his staff members had held parties during lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease. The fiasco has been dubbed as the partygate scandal.

On Monday, Johnson secured votes of 211 MPs, while 148 members of the British Parliament voted to remove him. All the 359 MPs in the House of Commons voted in a secret ballot.

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Johnson cannot face another vote of no-confidence for at least a year according to the rules, BBC reported.

“It is a convincing, decisive result and what it means as a government is that we can focus on what matters to people,” Johnson said after winning the motion. He posted a video message on Twitter after the voting.

Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer said that his Labour Party will get “Britain back on track”.

“The choice is clearer than ever before – Divided Tories [Conservatives] propping up Boris Johnson with no plan to tackle the issues you are facing,” Starmer wrote on Twitter. “Or a united Labour Party with a plan to fix the cost of living crisis and restore trust in politics.”

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Johnson, who scored a sweeping victory in the 2019 general elections, has been under pressure to step down after civil servant Sue Gray published a report on May 25 on the partygate scandal.

The report said that several parties had been organised at Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence, between 2020 and 2021 when a ban on gatherings was in place across the country due to the coronavirus lockdown.

The parties were attended by Johnson and other senior ministers of the government, the report said. Johnson had issued an apology for attending the parties.