British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing pressure within the Conservative Party to re-establish his grip following a chaotic speech to business leaders and a parliamentary revolt over social care.
Senior Tory Jeremy Hunt said it had "not been a great month" for the UK government, "not just on trivial issues like speeches going wrong but on much more serious issues like parliamentary standards".
Mr Johnson's address to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) yesterday saw him lose his place in his notes, talk about Peppa Pig and impersonate a car.
The government then survived a rebellion in parliament over its social care reforms, with 19 Conservatives opposing the plans and dozens more not voting at all in response to the cap on costs being less generous than expected.
It followed a bruising few weeks which have seen Mr Johnson’s judgement being questioned over his handling of a row on parliamentary standards and criticism of scaled-back plans for rail upgrades in northern England.
Former cabinet minister Mr Hunt, who stood against Mr Johnson for the Tory leadership in 2019, said the CBI speech "wasn’t a great moment and it hasn’t been a great month for the government".
In a sign of the questions being asked about Mr Johnson, a senior Downing Street source told the BBC "there is a lot of concern inside the building about the PM. It’s just not working".
"Cabinet needs to wake up and demand serious changes otherwise it’ll keep getting worse. If they don’t insist, he just won’t do anything about it," the source added.
Mr Hunt acknowledged there were "noises off" about Mr Johnson's leadership within the Conservative Party, but insisted the criticism was not on the same scale as that faced by his predecessors, David Cameron or Theresa May.
"I’m sure there are things that we can do better," he said.
"But I was in the cabinet for nine years from 2010 and frankly there's never been a time when there weren’t noises off in Westminster, there weren’t backbench MPs with complaints about the way the government is operating," Mr Hunt told Times Radio.
On Sky News, he said: "We all have bad moments and yesterday was not a great one for the prime minister."
Read more:
Johnson hails 'pure genius' Peppa Pig as private sector success
Mr Hunt, the Commons Health Committee chairman, was one of the Tories who abstained in the House of Commons yesterday evening over the social care reforms.
Mr Johnson narrowly succeeded in getting MPs to back his new policy to cap care costs in England yesterday evening.
The Government won the vote by 26, a major cut to the prime minister’s working majority of around 80 MPs, as 19 Conservatives including former cabinet minister Esther McVey and ex-chief whip Mark Harper rebelled to oppose the plans - while 68 Tories did not vote for them, either because they abstained or could not attend.
Mr Hunt told the BBC: "I was conflicted, I actually ended up abstaining because it is a big disappointment that they changed the way the cap is calculated."
Not including council support in calculating whether the cap on care costs has been reached means it "won’t protect the assets of as many people as we had hoped for," he said.
The scale of the revolt could encourage members of the House of Lords to seek to amend the legislation.
