Give Boris Johnson time to fix his crises, says Iain Duncan Smith

Boris Johnson must stay in place to deal with the “hugely damaging” No 10 parties scandal and the cost of living crisis because they are his responsibility to fix, according to the former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

The Conservative grandee said he wanted cabinet ministers to “temper their ambitions” and allow Johnson the time to sort out “the big, big crises that are hitting the government”.

He said a leadership contest would be destabilising at the moment. But asked whether it was possible to recover the reputation of the party with Boris Johnson remaining as prime minister, he told the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme: “None of us know the answer to that question ... Respect and trust you have to earn, and when you lose it, it’s a very difficult task to get it back across the board.

“And so that’s going to be a huge task. The government and the prime minister have set out to try and do that.”

Duncan Smith’s remarks came after a disastrous week for Johnson in which he lost five senior staff members and a string of MPs declared they had lost confidence in him.