All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
15 min listen
After fighting words briefed out to the papers overnight, this morning, the Prime Minister has finally decided to resign. A statement is expected today. On the episode, Katy Balls discusses with Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson whether he should have gone sooner (and the implications for the post-politics speaking circuit) and the leadership race that
Boris, your leader, hasn’t gone because he handled ineptly the fall-out from deputy chief whip Chris Pincher’s well-lubricated non-consensual bum-fun. Nor even because he lied about all that stuff as well. He has gone because Conservative MPs no longer believe he could win a general election. Who will come next? I don’t much care: none
Boris Johnson was often talked about as the luckiest politician on earth — and in a sense he was. Outrageous fortune powered his ascent. A child of privilege, he always seemed to get away with it, no matter what it might be. In elections, his timing was almost miraculously perfect, culminating in his big win
Boris Johnson has just quit – forced out by the sheer number of resignations, leaving him without a government. He came into office promising to deliver Brexit. He pledged taxes would be frozen and the size of government would shrink. Everything was of course overtaken by Covid. Here’s a look at his premiership in charts
22 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to the journalist and The Atlantic staff writer Graeme Wood about Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia and what he will discuss with the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Boris Johnson has announced that he is resigning as Prime Minister after facing a tide of ministerial resignations. Below is the full list of cabinet ministers, junior ministers and other government employees who resigned, forcing the Prime Minister to act. Cabinet ministers who have resigned from Boris Johnson’s government: 1. Oliver Dowden, party chairman (5.35 a.m. 24
Boris Johnson has so far had four cabinet ministers resign and sacked one – in the form of Michael Gove. Now, one minister has come out publicly to say they will run to be a successor should there be a leadership contest. Step forward Suella Braverman. On Wednesday evening, the Attorney General gave an interview to ITV’s
As the news rolled in that Michael Gove had been sacked by Boris Johnson, our own Douglas Murray was on Piers Morgan’s show on TalkTV alongside former spin doctor Alastair Campbell. Mr S thought that readers may well enjoy watching the subsequent clash between the pair over propriety in public life, which ended when Campbell stormed
Tonight it is clear that the only way Tory MPs can remove Boris Johnson is through the new 1922 executive changing the rules on Monday and a new confidence ballot on Tuesday. Johnson has ignored the pleas from several of his Cabinet to take a dignified exit. He is instead, in the words of one
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:
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
This is an edited transcript of the interview with the new chancellor Nadhim Zahawi on the Today programme this morning. Nick Robinson: You faced a choice yesterday, and I’d like you to explain it to our listeners. Why was it in the country’s interests as against yours, for you to stay in the cabinet and not to follow
In the blizzard of letters by Tory MPs who want Boris Johnson to go, one stands out. Chris Skidmore has called for the rules of the 1922 Committee to be changed so that another vote of no confidence. His argument is particularly forceful: ‘This is an extremely grave situation, that is tantamount to an effective cover-up
The 1922 Committee – the organising body for Conservative MPs – faces a momentous decision on Wednesday night. If its members believe the mood of their colleagues is that the Prime Minister must face an immediate further test of his popularity, following the Chris Pincher debacle and the serial resignations from government, they could allow
Just after 6 p.m. yesterday it seemed like the Boris Johnson regime was in total, house of cards style collapse. Sajid Javid resigned as Health Secretary during a televised act of contrition by the PM over his handling – if that’s not too indelicate a word – of the Chris Pincher affair. Five minutes later
The eco-mob is at it again. Members of the protest group Just Stop Oil have progressed from blocking fuel terminals to disrupting the British Grand Prix and gluing themselves to the frames of paintings in galleries and museums across the country. To which anyone with even the vaguest recollection of the traffic-stopping stunts of Insulate
More ministerial resignations are underway and the day has barely begun in Westminster. Will Quince, who had the humiliating job of answering questions about what Johnson knew and when on the Monday broadcast round, has quit. He’s an education minister and writes in his letter that the Prime Minister last night apologised to him for