Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.
8 min listen
Despite mass resignations and calls from newly appointed ministers to resign, Boris has dug his heels in and refused to leave. What will be his next moves? And are the rumours of a snap general election really on the cards? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth.
How can Boris Johnson survive this one? That’s the question all of Westminster is asking today after the resignations of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid. A number of other colleagues have chosen to follow them out of the door: you can keep track of resignations here. But it’s not just ministers who want Boris gone: more than a dozen backbenchers have now gone public with their frustrations. This follows last month’s no-confidence vote when 148 Tory MPs voted against Johnson’s leadership; a number that has only increased since then. Below is the growing list of those who have gone public with their demands for Johnson to go… MPs who have
A brutal encounter at the Liaison Committee this afternoon. Boris was grilled for two hours by a gang of aggressive MPs, (many of them Tories), who were drooling and panting for him to quit. But it wasn’t until the final moments that the session caught fire. Darren Jones took the first chunk out of the PM. ‘How’s your week going?’ asked the Labour MP mildly. ‘Terrific, like many other weeks.’ ‘Did Michael Gove come in and tell you to resign today?’ ‘I’m here to talk about what the government is doing.’ Boris brushed off a similar attack from the SNP’s Angus MacNeil. ‘The game’s up. Will you still be prime
It’s not been a good day for Boris Johnson. More than 50 Tory MPs have publicly called for him to go, he’s lost 30 members of his payroll vote and he got embarrassed by Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs in a performance which, shockingly, left the House demanding MORE of the staid Labour leader. This evening he is set to meet a delegation of senior Cabinet ministers who want him to quit. Among them is Nadhim Zahawi who, less than 24 hours after professing faith in the PM’s leadership now, er, finds that post-promotion he’s lost it. But probably the most humiliating moment was Johnson’s two hour grilling by some
Few leaders could be as different in character as Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson, but one can compare their predicaments when colleagues turned on them. Both had large parliamentary majorities and were never defeated in any election they led, yet both faced internal coups. In both cases, there were/ are good reasons why colleagues were fed up with their leaders. What was true in Mrs Thatcher’s case, however, and may well apply in Boris’s if he does go, is that her political assassination caused remorse, and immense, lasting division. As John Major understood and Michael Heseltine did not foresee, remorseful MPs tend to turn on the chief assassin and favour, almost
Boris Johnson’s final hours as Prime Minister have been undignified. We do not yet know quite how this will end, but we know he will eventually have to quit. There is a delegation of cabinet ministers in Downing Street waiting for him – more here. Johnson found out about this group while he was in the liaison committee hearing, and was confronted about it by Darren Jones. His response shows that he is not going to accept the first plea from this cabinet delegation. He burbled on about the cost of living and how he wasn’t going to ‘give you a running commentary’ on political issues. This underlines the point
14 min listen
As several cabinet ministers have resigned, is it hours, days, weeks or months before Boris Johnson is kicked out? James Forsyth joins Katy Balls from the roof of Parliament.
Has Nadhim Zahawi turned on Boris Johnson, just 24 hours after he was promoted to Chancellor? That’s the question all of Westminster is asking tonight amid reports for lobby journalists that Johnson will shortly meet with a delegation of senior cabinet ministers. It’s said to involve the Chancellor and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, following a raft of resignations during Johnson’s two hour grilling at the Liaison Committee. Unfortunately for Johnson, rather than plotting a response to all of this, he has been forced to spend his afternoon facing a range of issues from the national to the extremely local. It was left to Darren Jones, the Business Select Committee chairman
Boris Johnson is now facing a situation where if he doesn’t resign he will face more cabinet resignations. Johnson is currently in front of the liaison committee, but when he returns to his office he will have a delegation of cabinet ministers waiting to see him who will him he is done and that he must resign. When I asked one ‘Is it over?’, they simply replied ‘yes’. If Johnson won’t go, he will face more cabinet resignations than he can fill. Leaving junior ministerial posts unfilled is bad, but it is simply not credible to not be filling cabinet posts. Remarkably one of the ministers who will tell Johnson
So it ends as it was always likely to end: as a disgrace inside a shambles, lost in a fog of delusion. Boris Johnson’s fate was sealed the moment he became Prime Minister. As was apparent to those who cared to look, nothing in his past suggested he would have the chops to be a successful Prime Minister. The manner of his departure now is wholly in keeping with the substance of his premiership. In years to come, we may wonder how it ever happened at all even as we do our best to forget it did. This has been a low and embarrassing period in British political history. There
Westminster has always been run more by convention than by rulebook. Prime ministers are seldom forced out: they are persuaded that their position is unsustainable and they walk. Margaret Thatcher quit before facing a final vote. Tony Blair chose resignation in preference to an uprising led by Gordon Brown. Theresa May was technically safe from any leadership challenge when she resigned. After Remain lost the EU referendum, David Cameron decided to go quietly rather than face a warring party. But Boris Johnson is not a creature of Westminster. He did not rise through its ranks, he built no tribe and he is more given to issuing edicts than winning people
Knife crime beset PMQs. It was a horrific blue-on-blue bloodbath as Tory backstabbers queued up to play the role of Brutus and hack Caesar to death. David Davis shoved in his stiletto and claimed that the PM’s lack of integrity would ‘paralyse proper government.’ Mind you, he said that six months ago. ‘I thank him very much for the point he has made again,’ said Boris. Super-sulky Tim Loughton asked, ‘does he think there are any circumstances in which he should resign?’ ‘Being a good father, husband, son and citizen is enough for me,’ claimed the arch-plotter Boris fought back. ‘The job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances, when he’s
In the past couple of minutes, five ministers have resigned as a co-ordinated group and Michael Gove is reported to have told Boris Johnson in private that it’s time to go. Kemi Badenoch, Lee Rowley, Alex Burghart, Neil O’Brien and Julia Lopez have quit in a joint letter in which they call for Boris Johnson to step aside ‘for the good of the party, and the country’. They are bright, ambitious MPs who could form the future of the party. They also make the government look as though it is not functioning, and is at risk of being populated with anyone Boris Johnson can find who wants to be a minister
However badly Boris Johnson’s career ends, it will surely be a better finale than that of his great-grandfather, the Turkish journalist, editor and liberal politician Ali Kemal. Almost exactly a century ago, following the trauma of defeat and the end of the Ottoman Empire, Kemal was attacked by a mob of soldiers, hanged from a tree, his head smashed in with cudgels before being beaten to death. I can’t imagine that the Tory backbenchers will go that far. There is something charming and colourful about Johnson’s background, the mixture of Turkish, Russian, Jewish and even a Circassian slave just a few generations back (according to Boris Johnson, and if you
Sajid Javid’s resignation in the Commons just now was coldly brutal. He’s had some practice, which he acknowledged, given this is the second time he has resigned in protest from Boris Johnson’s government. The first personal statement he gave was critical, but this one was terminal. He said ‘treading the tightrope between loyalty and integrity has become impossible in recent months’ and that as Health Secretary he had repeatedly given Johnson the benefit of the doubt over partygate and other scandals. The theme of his statement was the damage that Boris Johnson continuing as Prime Minister is doing to the Conservative party. Javid complained about the way colleagues had been
At one point in today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, the Speaker called MPs to order and told them: ‘We’ve got to get through Prime Minister’s Questions.’ This was an instruction to backbenchers who were shouting at one another across the chamber. But it sounded like an ambitious goal for Boris Johnson. He barely got through the truly brutal, angry session. He barely got through the truly brutal, angry session Sir Keir Starmer led on the allegations of sexual assault against Chris Pincher, and on why the Prime Minister had made him deputy chief whip when he knew about Pincher’s behaviour. His questions and lines were strong, Johnson’s were exhausted and irrelevant.
Mr Speaker, I’m grateful for your permission to make this statement. Yesterday we began our day together. You, I, my Right Honourable Friend the Prime Minister, and colleagues from across this House, broke bread together at the parliamentary prayer breakfast and listened to the words of Reverend Les Issac, who spoke about the responsibility that comes with leadership – the responsibility to serve the interests of others above your own and to seek the common good of your party, your community and above all your country. Colleagues will be forgiven for sharing my sense of deja vu. Despite what it may seem, I have never been one of life’s quitters. I
41 min listen
My guest in this week’s Book Club podcast is Lindsey Fitzharris – whose new book is The Facemaker: One Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I. At its centre is the compelling figure of Harold Gillies – ace golfer, practical joker, and pioneer of the whole field of plastic surgery. Lindsey tells me about the extraordinary advances he made and the will and skill that drove them; and the poignant story of how victims of facial disfigurement were the invisible casualties of the conflict.
Boris Johnson has been given so many second chances. He hasn’t taken any of them. Let’s start with his voting for Theresa May’s terrible Brexit deal. Despite this, when Theresa May resigned he was backed by Leavers and became PM. Having become PM he didn’t, as he should have done, back a no deal, and instead negotiated a revised version of May’s deal. Though a huge improvement on her version, it was far from perfect. Leavers backed him nonetheless and he won a large majority in the general election. And for having defeated Corbyn and achieved Brexit he will be remembered as a hero by many Conservatives. Barely a couple
Late last night, Boris Johnson appeared to have stabilised the situation, albeit temporarily. He had managed to appoint a new Chancellor and Health Secretary and no other cabinet ministers had followed Sunak and Javid out the door. But this morning, his situation has rapidly deteriorated. Resignations from the junior ranks started up again, previously loyal MPs declared time was up, and Nadhim Zahawi’s media round was an illustration of how unsustainable the situation now is. The most immediate threat to Johnson is the ’22 committee changing the rules to allow another no confidence ballot. Opinion is moving rapidly in this direction. Rob Halfon, an executive member, who was just a
