James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who will join Sunak and Javid in quitting the cabinet?

This puts Boris Johnson in the gravest danger of his premiership

The Chancellor and the Health Secretary have both resigned and at least one more cabinet minister is considering their position. This is the cabinet moving against Boris Johnson. It reflects the growing sense in cabinet that, as Sunak puts it, ‘we cannot continue like this’.

This puts Boris Johnson in the gravest danger of his premiership. It is hard to see how he can continue when he is losing the confidence of so many of his cabinet who feel that the current situation is untenable for the country, the government and the Conservative party.

It is remarkable for two such senior cabinet ministers to resign at the same time. It reflects their deep frustration with how the government is being run, and the consequences of that.

In his letter, Sunak says that he has previously been prepared to compromise and accept collective responsibility for decisions that he didn’t agree with, but he can no longer do this because the differences between No. 10 and No. 11 are now too great to be bridged.

Javid writes to Johnson: ‘you have lost my confidence too’. Javid tells Johnson ‘the party is bigger than any one individual’ and that in a conflict of loyalties between the country and Johnson he had to put country first. We now wait to see if others follow these two, and I suspect they will.

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