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Boris Johnson suffers double blow as Conservatives loses 2 seats and party co-chairman quits

Editor's note: This segment did not air on June 24, 2022 as planned due to breaking news. 

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has suffered further setbacks to his leadership after his Conservative Party lost another two seats in special elections dominated by questions about his leadership and ethics.

There was yet more misery for the embattled prime minister as the party's chairman quit after the results came in on Friday morning. In a publicly posted resignation letter, he wrote the party "cannot carry on with business as usual." The centrist Liberal Democrats overturned a big Conservative majority to win the rural southwest England seat of Tiverton and Honiton, a seat that had been safely in Conservative hands since its creation in the 1990s. In Northern England, the main opposition Labour Party comfortably reclaimed the constituency of Wakefield from Johnson's Tories.

NPR's Frank Langfitt joins us.

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