10.00 Thursday July 7 Paul Goodman reporting
Welcome back to another day of the ConservativeHome Live Blog.
- Boris Johnson is to resign.
- He reportedly wants to stay as Prime Minister while the Conservative leadership election takes place until the Conservative Party Conference in the autumn.
- That raises the question of how long the election process will be. There will doubtless be the usual manoeuvre by some MPs to cut the membership stage from the contest, which would not be compatible with the rules. There will have to be an accomodation between getting a move on, so that Johnson is properly replaced as soon as possible, and having a contest that allows candidacies to be properly tested. I doubt that the contest will run as long as October.
- Is a continued Johnson premiership acceptable, even if the election wraps up before October? David Cameron stayed on t to accomodate the Party contest that produced Theresa May; she stayed on for the contest that produced Johnson. So the recent precedents favour him staying; but his recent conduct and reputation may not.
- If Dominic Raab isn’t standing for the leadership, he is the obvious interim Prime Minister if one is needed. If he is standing, I doubt that other candidates would be willing to let him enter the contest with the advantage of incumbency. In which event Johnson staying on might become the least bothersome solution.
- As I write, responsibility for managing the election is set to lie in the joint hands of Ben Elliot, now the sole Party Chairman in the wake of Oliver Dowden’s resignation, and the 1922 Committee’s Executive.
- If the Government is to return to functioning normality, those Ministers who’ve resigned or have been sacked during the past few days and not yet been replaced should be reappointed with immediate effect.
21.30
- In the latest installment of the Johnson/Gove pyschodrama, Sam Coates of Sky is claiming that the former has sacked the latter.
- As I reported earlier, Gove apparenty told Johnson this morning that he should quit. The Levelling Up Secretary wasn’t at PMQs. He has been lying low. We will doubtless find out more about that Johnson/Gove conversation tomorrow. Feels like Downfall time in the bunker.
20.30
- Multiple reports that Brandon Lewis has quit, then just as quickly denied.
- Other Cabinet Ministers appear to have threatened resignation and/or advised Johnson to go. If more don’t go, and in the absence of a leadership ballot rule change, Johnson may dig in – and look for replacements for the 40 or so Ministers / PPS’s/envoys who have quit.
- Cabinet Ministers are claiming that they’ve offered Johnson a timetable for his departure. Number Ten is briefing that he has called their bluff.
- So, then: the ’22 Executive has funked a rule change, so passing the parcel back to the Cabinet. If more Cabinet members don’t follow Dowden, Javid and Sunak, it’s possible that Johnson will hold out until next week. And each passing day risks inflicting more yet damage on the Government and the Conservatives.
- Henry Olsen, who called the 2019 election correctly when I saw him shortly before polling day, says that “Shakespearean analogies are oft overdone, but I think King Lear has been told he has not even five and twenty knights who will follow him. The raging tonight on #10’s heath amidst the storms of power lost will be legendary.”
- And a friend writes: “Let me see if I have this right. In the space of 24 hours, Nadhim Zahawi accepted the offer of a job from the PM, told the PM he must resign and then pledged to work with the PM to advance his agenda.”
19.30
- Graham Brady has also been in Number Ten offering “wise counsel” – i.e: advising Johnson to quit before further Cabinet Ministers go as early perhaps as this evening; or before a newly-elected ’22 Executive on Monday changes the leadership ballot confidence rules to facilitate a further vote next week on Johnson’s position.
- Cabinet members are apparently meeting the Prime Minister one to one.
18.30 Paul Goodman reporting
- As I write, the 1922 Committee Executive has passed the loaded pistol either to the Cabinet, or to the new committee the election of which has been expedited to Monday. It has balked at changing the leadership challenge rules.
- As William reported earlier, Cabinet members including Nadhim Zahawi, Grant Shapps, Brandon Lewis, Michelle Donelan, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, and Simon Hart will apparently meet Johnson this evening to tell him to go. Kwasi Kwarteng is reported to support this view.
- Their view will have weight only if all concerned are prepared to resign if Johnson himself does not. It follows that Zahawi and Donelan must be prepared to leave jobs that they accepted only yesterday evening. Were he to go himself, Zahawi would thus become the shortest-serving Chancellor in modern times, and Johnson would therefore have got through three Chancellors in less than three years.
- Some of Johnson’s allies are claiming that he is prepared to go over all their heads to seek a general election – and will not quit, even if Cabinet positions and 37 Government posts in all remain vacant. I defer to the college of constitutional experts, but it is far from clear to me that the Queen would grant him an election in such circumstances. Indeed, it seems possible to me that she might actually fire him, especially in the event of the new ’22 Executive refusing to change the leadership challenge rules.
17:30 William Atkinson reporting
- A Cabinet delegation will greet the Prime Minister in Downing Street after his brush with the Liaison Committee. It will tell the Prime Minister to resign. Reportedly, the delegation will include Nadhim Zahawi, the new Chancellor, and Michelle Donelan, the new Education Secretary.
- Also included will be Grant Shapps, Brandon Lewis, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, and Simon Hart. They also have the apparent support of Kwasi Kwarteng, who is outside of London and unable to join them.
- Events continue to change at pace, with the number of ministerial and other resignations reaching 35 at the time of writing.
15.30
- In the event of Boris Johnson resigning, there are currently 29 Ministerial vacancies (and counting). Let’s presume that a Conservative leadership election takes a minimum of a month. Who fills those vacancies? How can the Government even pretend to function if they’re not filled?
- Over on Twitter, Sam Freeman points out that “we now have one department (DfE) with no commons Ministers apart from the SoS left. And another (DHLUC) with just one”.
- And in the event of a contest, what sort of candidate is best placed? A Minister who stayed the course, like Ben Wallace and Nadhim Zahawi? Or one who quit, like Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak? If the consensus is that Johnson’s Government fundamentally failed, how can candidates who served him as Ministers persuade Party members that they’ll now do better?
14.30
- Kemi Badenoch and Neil O’Brien are gone. These are key Ministers in the levelling up department – and it’s being reported that Michael Gove told the Prime Minister this morning that the game is up.
- There are now 27=9 Ministerial vacancies. Rob Ford tweets than Johnson has lost more Ministers in a day than David Cameron did in five years.
- Whether the Prime Minister resigns today or stays on to fight a ballot, it’s impossible to see how he can now hold on.
13.30 Paul Goodman reporting
- I wrote this morning that were Graham Brady to conclude that Boris Johnson no longer has the support of the Conservative Parliamentary Party, he would tell him; and that were the Prime Minister not to quit, the ’22 Executive would then consider a rule change to allow a new confidence ballot to take place.
- The ’22 Executive is meeting later this afternoon at 17.00. So it looks as though events are moving quickly. And I understand that Brady may meet the Prime Minister earlier.
- However, don’t assume that the Executive will necessarily approve a rule change. Senior members of it are also mindful that elections for a new Executive are due next week, and some members of the present Executive may be unwilling to steal the next one’s thunder.
- In the event of no further Cabinet resignations and no rule change, it is hard to see how Johnson is immediately removed (unless he is willing to go). One senior Conservative who spoke to me earlier today was casting about for other options – “200 of us could make a public statement,” he said. But it’s fair to say that options other than a Cabinet coup or a new ballot are speculative.
- In the meantime, 18 Ministers or PPS’s or trade envoys have quit – details here.
- Sajid Javid has said in a resignation statement to the Commons that he was assured by Number Ten that it no rules were broken in relation to Downing Street social events – that “enough is enough”: and that “the problem starts at the top and that it is not going to change.”
- Three Conservative MPs called for the Prime Minister to go during PMQs – Tim Loughton David Davis, and Gary Sambrook, who said that Johnson suggested in the Commons tea room yesterday that MPs were to blame for not constraining Chris Pincher in the Carlton Club; that he always tries to blame others for his mistakes, and that he should resign.
- If the ’22 Executive doesn’t approve a rule change and there are no further Cabinet resignations, how is Downing Street going to fill this mass of ministerial vacancies? What follows if it can’t?
