Boris Johnson's brand of colorful politics frays at the edges. But is he out?

LONDON – In 2012, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was left dangling on a zip wire when it stopped working during the Summer Olympics in London.

It offers an apt analogy for Johnson's current political predicament. He has long been able to defy the laws of political gravity, a clown-king who routinely disguises perceived moral failings and outright falsehoods in soaring Churchill-esque speeches laced with elaborate Latin flourishes.

But Monday's no-confidence vote left him twisting in the political wind.

Johnson, 57, will, for now, remain as Conservative party leader and prime minister after he survived a no-confidence vote in his premiership late Monday. But the move to oust him by rebel lawmakers – who were furious that Johnson and his staff drank and got merry in his Downing Street offices while the rest of the country toiled under strict COVID-19 lockdowns – has left him looking politically bruised and exposed.

The numbers are stark: Some 40% of the 359 Conservative lawmakers who cast their secret ballots in Monday's vote believe the country would be better off without Johnson in charge.

Boris Johnson bruised but still standing after no-confidence vote

That's a far higher dissenting percentage than in previous confidence votes won by former prime ministers Sir John Major in 1995 and Theresa May in 2018. Major was crushed in a landslide general election by the Tony Blair-led Labour party two years later. May announced her resignation within six months after repeatedly failing to get her plan for the U.K to leave the European Union – Brexit – through a skeptical Parliament.

For Johnson, the mood on the street is even worse. In a snap poll released ahead of the vote by YouGov, an online research firm, 60% of the British public surveyed said that Johnson's government lacks the right policies and ideas to deal with the number one issue currently occupying the minds of voters: a cost-of-living crisis exasperated by several years of the coronavirus pandemic and now Russia's war against Ukraine, which has stifled access to some exports.

Will Brexit and promises of economic growth be enough to save him?

When Johnson swept to power in 2019 with a mandate to "get Brexit done" his victory represented the biggest parliamentary majority in the House of Commons since Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1987. Now, half of those same Conservative voters who enthused about Johnson in 2019 approved of the decision to hold the no-confidence vote seeking his ouster, according to the YouGov survey.

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"The problem for the prime minister is while he seems determined to stay and recover his position, it is hard to see how he does that," said Catherine Haddon, a historian and politics fellow at the Institute for Government, a think tank in London. "His party appears split over his leadership, there are many frustrations with the direction of policy and the leadership vote, and its aftermath, only seems to be increasing the bloodletting."

Johnson said he wants to "move on" after the vote which saw four out of 10 of his own ruling Conservative lawmakers call for his ousting. He's hoping that his record of pushing Brexit through Parliament, his success in rolling out Britain's COVID-19 vaccine program and his pledge to spur economic growth through aggressive tax cuts will be enough for him to "draw a line" under Monday night's poor result.

"The only way for Johnson to survive now is to launch a Policy Blitzkrieg. Slash tax. Launch All Out War on cost of living. Reform institutions. Give voters & MPs what they thought they were getting 3 yrs ago & what Operation Red Meat promised 6 months ago. Last chance saloon," Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor at the University of Kent, in England, tweeted Monday.

"Operation Red Meat" refers to a series of measures broadly popular with supporters of Brexit, such as stepping up coast guard patrols in the English Channel to prevent asylum seekers from crossing over from France.

'Party's Over, Boris'

Still, it's not just the so-called partygate revelations about government employees boozing at No. 10 Downing St. during coronavirus lockdowns that has taken the shine off of Johnson's political star. While did he usher a tricky Brexit deal with the European Union through Parliament, he's also threatened to renege on certain trade aspects of it that could spark a crisis for Northern Ireland's notoriously fragile political system.

He's confounded immigration experts by, out of the blue, seeking to fly some asylum seekers to Rwanda. He's centralized power and sidelined Parliament. He's been quick to ship arms to Ukraine, much slower to allow Ukrainian refugees to come to the U.K.

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In fact, Johnson has long courted celebratory, maverick status and played to the gallery

with large doses of flamboyance and allusions to classical civilizations, black humor and ribald innuendo. (He's also made racist and Islamophobic remarks.)

A former journalist for the Times (of London) he was once fired for fabricating a quote. In a 2014 interview with USA TODAY when he was mayor of London, Johnson said his chance of becoming prime minister was about as good as finding Elvis on Mars or being reincarnated as an olive.

But perhaps most damaging of all, Johnson has redefined what has long been seen as acceptable in a political leader in Britain, where tradition, optics, form and a certain type of staidness of behavior and manner have long mattered.

Several British tabloid newspaper headlines appeared to reflect this unspoken assumption Tuesday. "Party's Over, Boris," read The Mirror, though newspapers such as The Financial Times took a more neutral tone, noting "Johnson wounded in confidence vote."

British politicians are used to being booed and jeered.

But when Johnson arrived with his wife Carrie at Saint Paul's Cathedral in central London last week for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Thanksgiving service, the booing and jeering by a crowd of onlookers was louder and more aggrieved-sounding than any of the broadcasters covering the event could remember.

"U.K. political history suggests that any prime minister facing the scale of revolt Boris Johnson experienced yesterday would be thinking about resignation," said Haddon.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Boris Johnson's future murky after Monday's no-confidence vote