Boris Johnson has insisted he won his no confidence vote with a ‘convincing and decisive’ majority despite receiving the backing of just 59% of his colleagues.

A total of 148 Tory MPs voted to oust their leader on Monday night, while 211 backed him to stay on – meaning he effectively has the support of less than a third of the House of Commons.

The prime minister said his government was ready to ‘move on’ after the result, but appeared indecisive over the prospect of a snap general election to shore up his position.

He twice dodged questions from the BBC on whether he would rule out a snap election, before eventually saying he was ‘certainly not interested’ in one.

Mr Johnson said: ‘I think this is a very good result for politics and for the country.

‘I think it’s a convincing result, a decisive result and what it means is that as a government we can move on and focus on the stuff that really matters to people.’

Westminster pundits widely agreed Mr Johnson’s leadership had emerged heavily bruised from the vote, which was triggered when 15% of MPs submitted letters of no confidence amid mounting anger over the ‘partygate’ scandal.

It has left him in a weaker position than his predecessor Theresa May was in after surviving a no confidence vote months before she was ousted.

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The December 2018 ballot saw 37% of Tory MPs cast votes against her, in contrast to the 41% who opposed Mr Johnson on Monday.

Challenged over the significance of the gap, Mr Johnson argued the vote had given him a bigger mandate than his 2019 leadership election.

But his share of the vote was lower than the 66% of colleagues who chose him over Jeremy Hunt.

He also appeared to suggest the furore around his lockdown-breaking antics had been exaggerated in the press, and that voters were not interested in it.

He continued: ‘I’m grateful to colleagues, I’m grateful for the support they’ve given me.

‘Of course I understand that we need to do now is come together as a government and as a party, and that is exactly what we can now do.

‘And what this gives us is the opportunity to put behind us all the stuff that the media have quite properly wanted to focus on for a very long and do our job which is to focus on the stuff that I think the public actually want us to be talking about, which is what we are doing to help the people in this country, and all the things we’re doing to take this country forward.’

The MPs so far known to have voted against Mr Johnson hail from all over the Conservative political spectrum, including Brexiteers, Remainers, veterans of Tory safe seats and newcomers from ‘Red Wall’ constituencies.

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Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer argued the public were ‘fed up with a prime minister who promises big but never delivers’.

The leader of the Lib Dems, Sir Ed Davey, said the Tories were now ‘fully responsible for the prime minister’s behaviour – they have narrowly voted to keep a lawbreaker and liar in No 10’.

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