A “MORTALLY wounded” Boris Johnson is set to be gone within months, cross-party MPs warned yesterday, as the Prime Minister clung to power by a thread.

The Tory leader survived a confidence vote by his party’s MPs on Monday evening, but more than 40 per cent wanted him to resign.

MPs voted by 211 to 148 in support of the Prime Minister, but the scale of the opposition was greater than that seen in 2018, when his predecessor Theresa May faced a similar leadership test before being forced out months later.

Addressing a Cabinet meeting yesterday, Mr Johnson claimed that the vote allows him to draw a line under questions surrounding his leadership.

But criticism from within his own party and the opposition continued to flow in, as well as calls for him to step down.

Former Tory leader Lord Hague said that the damage done to Mr Johnson’s premiership was severe and that he should quit rather than prolong the agony.

He added that he would have “regarded as untenable” a situation where more than a third of MPs voted against his leadership.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen predicted that “residual concerns from across the party will continue to remain.”

Former minister Philip Dunne said that “this is not over,” while Commons defence committee chairman Tobias Ellwood forecast that the PM would only survive for “a matter of months.”

Tory MP Julian Lewis attacked Mr Johnson for having an “aversion to scrutiny, bordering on contempt for the Commons,” adding that “impropriety at the top of government is impossible to defend.”

Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said that it was clear from the vote that Tory MPs “think he’s done a disgraceful thing.”

She said: “He’s mortally wounded.

“It’s been clear over the last couple of months that he’s not dealing with the cost-of-living crisis, NHS waiting lists or delivered on the hospitals that he promised.

“All the departments have not been able to deal with issues that real people are facing at the moment because they’ve been too fixated on trying to save Boris Johnson.

“He cares about one thing — himself.”

SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford described the PM as a “dead man walking,” warning that he will “pay a price for his behaviour.”

He said: “A Prime Minister that signalled yesterday that he would do everything that he’d done all over again … it’s that signal that the rules don’t apply to him the way that they do for everyone else.

“Rules are for little people, but not the Prime Minister.

“That’s not the behaviour of someone who can remain in office, it’s someone that quite simply needs to be removed from office.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said his party will put forward a vote of no confidence in the PM to the Commons.

Labour MP Jon Trickett tweeted: “Super-rich donors who’ve given the Tories £18 million in the last few years wrote to MPs yesterday demanding they don’t ditch Boris.

“Tory MPs dutifully obliged. A government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.”

Green MP Caroline Lucas wrote: “He’s hugely damaged by this.

“If so many of his own MPs have no confidence in him, how does he expect the rest of the country to?”

Mr Johnson promised to cut taxes and drive down the cost of government in an attempt to address criticism of his policies.

He told Cabinet ministers that “delivering tax cuts” would help “considerable growth in employment and economic progress.”

But the PM’s official spokesperson said that there were no specific plans for tax cuts.