Is it really ‘business as usual’ in Boris’s government?

Priti Patel was supposed to be going before the Home Affairs committee this morning, but pulled out, citing ministerial changes in her department and recent events. The Home Secretary is understood to have cancelled the long-planned appearance at 5pm yesterday, seriously angering members of the cross-party committee.

This sounds like the sort of thing that only parliamentary nerds could possibly get cross about. But it does raise an important question about whether the government is really running a ‘business as usual’ operation while the Conservative party hunts for a new prime minister. Boris Johnson claims that he’s filled the ministerial holes left by last week’s resignations so that the business of running the country continues. More than that: he’s instructed his cabinet to keep delivering this government’s priorities, while promising them that he won’t be expecting them to go off in any radically new directions in the final weeks of his premiership.