Sunak can’t afford to lose Braverman

Back in the early days of the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell was reputed to have a rule for resignations: once a scandal had been in the news for ten consecutive days, a minister had to go. It was a stupid rule because it merely encouraged parliamentary lobby journalists to keep a story going until the limit was up in the expectation of claiming another ministerial scalp. Since then Alastair has claimed, possibly truthfully, that he cannot remember imposing this rule and had probably come up with it when the Tories were still in power as a means of further stoking up the atmosphere of crisis around John Major.

Rishi Sunak would therefore be extremely foolish to impose his own version of the Campbell rule: namely that any minister facing an onslaught from the likes of the BBC and activist civil servants gets thrown under the bus if it leads the news for too long.