Boris Johnson will quit today after his new Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi told him to go and another eight ministers walked out demanding he accepts reality. MailOnline has more.
The PM has admitted defeat half-an-hour after a shattering intervention from Nadhim Zahawi, who was only appointed on Tuesday night in the wake of Rishi Sunak’s departure. He told Mr. Johnson that his situation is “not sustainable”.
A No. 10 source said Mr Johnson has spoken to Tory 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady and agreed to stand down, with a new Tory leader set to be in place by the party conference in October.
Boris Johnson is on the verge of quitting after his new Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi told him to go and another eight ministers walked out demanding he accepts reality.
A spokeswoman said: “The Prime Minister will make a statement to the country today.”
Although he stopped short of resigning, Mr Zahawi appears to have struck the killer blow with his public call for Mr Johnson to give in. He tweeted: “Prime Minister: this is not sustainable and it will only get worse: for you, for the Conservative Party and most importantly of all the country. You must do the right thing and go now.'”
Education Secretary Michelle Donelan, who was installed in post at the same time as Mr. Zahawi, also declared she is quitting, barely two hours after Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis fell on his sword.
Up to then the PM had vowed defiance despite the overwhelming evidence of his authority draining away.
However, it is far from clear that Mr. Johnson staying on until October – more than two months – will be acceptable to Tory MPs. More than 50 Government members have resigned, and there will be questions over whether they can simply be reappointed, or would even agree to that.
George Freeman, who announced he was resigning as science minister this morning, said Mr. Johnson must apologise to the Queen and advise her to call for a caretaker PM.
“Boris Johnson needs to hand in the seals of office, apologise to Her Majesty and advise her to call for a caretaker Prime Minister,” he said.
“To take over today so that ministers can get back to work and we can choose a new Conservative leader to try and repair the damage and rebuild trust.”
At 6.47am, Mr. Lewis tweeted that he could no longer continue without “honesty, integrity and mutual respect”.
Minutes later Treasury minister Helen Whately followed suit saying “there are only so many times you can apologise and move on”.
Security minister Damian Hinds and science minister George Freeman had followed by 7.30am, and pensions minister Guy Opperman by 7.50am.
Meanwhile, Wales minister David T.C. Davies publicly announced that he had refused a promotion to take over from Welsh Secretary Simon Hart, who quit last night. The Attorney General, Suella Braverman has called for Mr. Johnson to resign and said she is only staying in place to keep the Government functioning.
With the resignation tally now standing well over 50, the Government has been unable to find a minister willing to go on the airwaves to speak up for the PM this morning – with total silence coming from his team.
The Chief Whip Chris Heaton-Harris was seen going into Downing Street early, after the lights were seen on in the PM’s flat deep into the night.
With the once-popular, charismatic leader felled, will the Tories repeat history by installing a dull, largely competent but electorally disastrous new John Major, or will they manage to find a leader who can unite the party and win elections with a focused, clear-sighted, genuinely conservative administration? Even writing that makes it seem unlikely.
Read Toby’s tribute (of sorts) to the man he first met at Oxford 40 years ago here.
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Hmm. Looks like my comment yesterday might be right.
Drag out the Leadership contest through 2022 and elections 2023.
Boris has charisma, not many people have it, but those who have, want people to like/love/admire them and that’s their modus operandi. The man for the job now is Dominic Raab, quietly loyal, takes the job on the chin, its what we need now, a clear thinker who is focused on the job not on pleasing people.
I don’t recall so much as a peep out of Raab that opposed covid restrictions. Of course the same applies to most of the other realistic candidates. At least Mordaunt abstained from the last covid votes. Pretty sure Raab voted with the government. What we don’t know is who were the (relative) covid sceptics in the cabinet who pushed the PM to ditch Plan B.
Possibly a good thing not to respond to everything a chaotic PM does.
The only person I remember gaining some credibility with regard to freedom and Covid was Steve Baker.
He got behind the Together declaration, which brought down the HC GT mandate.
Therefore, he could be the right properly conservative Brexiter candidate Toby wishes for, although I am not sure about his charisma and he won’t have enough backing anyway.
As someone here stated before, if it’s Gove, get ready for mandatory tattoos on your forehead, if you are not fully vaccinated, let alone unvaccinated.
There is only one true politican around Westminster who could come close to being up to the job and that is Lord Frost.
The paucity of intellect, honesty, integrity, gravitas amongst our political class is absolutely staggering.
I agree, he’s way above any of the cabinet, but would he be able to step in?
A man asleep on a beach to replace a man asleep on sentry duty, when duty called?
Probably the only individual with the charisma required is Ms Mordaunt.
She will require a strong team but Lord Frost, Mr Wallace, Mr Zahawi, Mr Sunak can provide that team.
Wallace: utterly bland. W of S
Zahawi: Davos Deviant. Crook. Non British.
Sunak: Davos Deviant. Crook. Non British
So only Lord Frost.
What a very un-British comment and factually incorrect.
Mr Wallace has achieved a great deal more in his life than you ever will and shown excellent judgement over Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The ethnic origin of any of these individuals is completely irrelevant. They are all British.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
You don’t appear to understand the difference between state and nation.
Zahawi and Sunak might be UK citizens but to describe them as British is absurd: it would be like claiming all NZ citizens are Maoris.
Complete bigoted nonsense.
A British citizen is British.
That’s it.
A laughable failure to deal with my point that state and nation aren’t synonyms.
I’m ethnically British.Those two aren’t.
You’re effectively denying the existence of the indigenous population of these islands and making the utterly absurd claim that those who arrived yesterday are no different than those most of whose ancestors were here 4,000 years ago.
Define British ethnicity.
Oh! I see…..a bit tricky, isn’t it…..?
I am partly Scottish, from before written records began so probably Nordic via Ireland.
Also part English but from Norman antecedents.
But English comes from the Angles from Central Europe, much of the early language still spoken on the Frisian Islands
And part Anglo Irish but with a French Great Great Grandmother and a Great Great Grandfather who almost certainly descended from peripatetic Assyrians.
My surname? Those who know about these things suggest potentially French Huguenot, exiled to these islands in the seventeenth century.
My wife? Saxon (Oh! From Saxony, then.) and Scottish but quite possibly some Spanish blood from the survivors of the Spanish Armada.
Try and tell me that we are not ethnically British and you and I will take it outside…..
I prefer not to descend to rudeness but your lack of intelligence is an embarrassment to the members of this site.
Never wise to comment after your customary Babycham.
Isn’t Wallace the infantile tosser who laughably claimed that, because of the performance of the British army in ther Crimean War, our current tiny, badly-equipped , led-by-PC-buffoons army would have have no trouble defeating the Russian army?
There seem to be a lot of infantile tossers about.
Maybe a little early for the special brew.
Feeble.
It looks like I have found the downticker and the site has gained a troll with spare cash. Or a sugar daddy.
So much narcissism, so little clue; perfect for a thread on Bunter.
So you’ve moved on to the Bucky.
Interesting….
Time will tell, but I do fear this could be game over for us. What looked to me like an orchestrated campaign of sustained pressure has finally got its man. I cannot stand the guy, but maybe the cabal running the show couldn’t either.
Looking on the bright side, it could be that many more people now understand that they bought a puppy, listening too much and believing too much of the propaganda dished out by certain organisations.
You clear out a stinking house. If the new occupants cause a stink then they get turned out as well.
But we haven’t cleared out the stinking house, they did. The occupants of that stinking house moved to better arrange the furniture. We hold zero influence atm, and the sooner people understand that the better; only then can the masses show their power.
Yes! The group occupying and stinking up the house have simply kicked one of their lot out.
And worse still, if you clear out this lot, all you have to replace them is an even more putrid, fetid bunch.
For the avoidance of doubt I have no hope whatsoever in the system working for the benefit of anyone but themselves.
To me, it points to an imperfect coup. Whether orchestrated by Davos globalists or China (the latter becoming more and more plausible in my mind, or is there even a difference given UN as the common denominator) they operate through ‘cutouts’ – examples would be Obama, Biden, Trudeau, Ardern etc. But they don’t have control of the entire system (yet) so their operations are kind of bitty and imperfect. Johnson clearly failed to deliver on certain targets and so you’re right, there was a sustained campaign against him via the channels and levers ‘they’ had at their disposal; esp. the media. This lasted several months – we should be examining this period closely as it will tell us lots about the limitations of the occupiers’ power in this country.
Agree. I do believe that those crowing on some kind of morally pure high ground are likely to soon find that very same ground a desperately barren one that’s covered in sh*t.
It’s a Vichy government – we’re speculating about who will become the camp commander, IMO.
Well, who’s been appointed to an organisation by the boss, and the first thing you do is to tell him to resign? Weird.
Bob’s take
Boris the puppet has gone. Bring on the next puppet (and let’s Trusst in her).
The job of all honest journalists (indeed all people) is to discover who are the puppeteers.
Go to it, Toby and worthy crew.
He’s resigning but he is outwardly resigning for the wrong reasons. He’s not resigning because of the devastation he’s caused the country over the last two and a half years and will continue for years to come. It seems he’s resigning over parties and text messages and other trivia. This is just the continuation of the political denial and mendaciousness which infests Westminster.
Alleged front-runner wrote a book last year with an intro by Bill Gates
The bad thing is that this has immediately brought Dominic “Don’t call me a rat, no rat deserves that!” Cummings back into the limelight, making all kinds of hysterical demands. And that’s the guy who is a committed Zero Covidian out of his immeasurable cowardice. No more Boris is certainly called for. But we don’t exactly need an Arden or a Trudeau as replacement.
Was this local or international? The Tories or the Davos Deviants?
If we know the answer to the above it may shed light on what to expect. Sadly I fear this coup was a DD Bunker command. As John K rightly points out, on accepting his promotion Zahawi promptly turns his back on his boss and tells him to resign – not very British…oh. Whoops….
It looks like matters may take a turn for the worse because if the DD’s are behind this they will damn well make sure that the next PM is a proper puppet.
Davos is behind nothing and we’d all be better of without continuously fighting these US domestic politics proxy battles. It absolutely doesn’t matter which guy presently sits in the White House and which other guy would like to sit there, especially as these guys are indistinguishable, anyway. They’re all good and all fighting evil fascists with the term fascist long devoid of any meaning beyond the other guy.
The currently most peddled definition of fascism is exactly identical to Hitler’s jewish world conspiracy minus the term.
I do not wish to appear rude but I haven’t got a clue what you are on about.
That makes two.
Three. I thought I followed it at first but re-read it and its turns out I don’t.
The whole great reset narrative comes from the internet wing of Joe Biden’s political opponents. That’s a fantasy story designed to make the Democrats look bad, nothing more. And since that’s an American party, how they look matters preciously little outside of the USA.
Doesn’t it come from here?
The WEF publishes one of these content-free, buzzword-laden tomes about every year, always using the then-current buzzwords.
Check the publications of the Tony Blair Institute, which is very cosy with the WEF. “Our teams are now embedded in governments around the world” (May 2020) https://nitter.it/jengleruk/status/1544952568870313985#m – there’s much more where that came from, for example he claims in the Tony Blair Institute UK annual accounts that he persuaded the UK to go from targeting the vaccines to vulnerable groups, to a policy of universal vaccination. They’re open about it, but somehow when anybody else mentions it, it’s just a conspiracy theory.
“…teams working in more than 20 countries and providing advice and resources to a greater number”
https://web.archive.org/web/20220202041326/https://institute.global/institute/our-response-covid-19
Here they are lobbying for mass COVID testing and digital ID, in a piece co-signed by Jeremy Hunt, now one of the leading candidates to replace Boris Johnson:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220202041629/https://institute.global/policy/taking-uk-testing-strategy-next-level
I think you’ve confused yourself regarding the purpose of this site. Your research is also somewhat adrift.
I think you should stop publishing speculations about me. This just communicates that my statements hit on something you’d like to bury.
Runners: Drax, Baker, Hunt, Truss, Frost, Jabbit, Sunak and Raab.
Outsider possible: Jenkyns
And most importantly, what colour will No 10’s new wallpaper be?
(just trying to get ahead of the supine MSM, y’understand)
More pertinently I wonder if the book has opened on the colour of the new PM?
And now over to the weather.
Could any of these free us from WEF tyranny
According to RW there is no WEF (Schwab, Charlie Windsor, Soros, Carnage Carney, et al), no Reset, no Agenda 2030, these are all fantasies of Joe Biden and his Democrats.
Charles even has a page about it on his own website. https://web.archive.org/web/20220411203452/https://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/thegreatreset
He’s a man without a country now. Moral of the story: when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
At the moment Neil Oliver’s aphorism seems entirely appropriate:
“It’s not always about what they say it’s about.”
Something big is on its way.
‘Something big is on its way.’
I have about five different big budget dystopian science fiction disaster movies in the running at this point.
I reckon they’re going to try to reverse Brexit – in deed, if not formally. They were talking about BJ resigning on the Dutch news about 10 minutes before his speech, and the tone was that they expect to see a change in the Brexit process.
I also think the rape of constitutions and the rule of law to “protect people” is something the scum political leaders of the West are only to happy to continue with, now they realise how jaw-droppingly easy it is to make people give up basic rights and do absurd things for no reason whatsoever. And to continue making them do absurd things even when it is beyond clear that said absurd things have been abject failures.
My prediction: a year from now we will see in the UK what is happening in the US. After all the whining of how terrible Trump was, a lot of foolish voters now realise how much worse Biden is. The same will apply here. I can imagine Sunak becoming PM, fits in with the current diversity trend (I have zero problems with a PM of Asian descent, it’s just when it appears to be based on tokenism, undermines everything). I love El Gato, but neither Sunak nor Jabbid resigned out of any sense of disgust with Boris, they’ve had months to do that, as have all the other rats. This is typical, nasty, back-stabbing UK politics. The sad thing is that whoever takes over will probably be much worse for the country as a whole. If a GE sees Labour or a Labour/LD win, the UK will be where the US is today, on the road to hell.
Great summary (as usual).
My (current, this week!) take on the upheaval of the last few years is that it was very much targeted at the US, which I think is currently being systematically dismantled from within by outside forces and their proxies. At this point every aspect of the American way of life is under attack – its history, culture, myths, politics, traditions, individualism, liberty etc. have been deconstructed and demolished to make way for communitarianism – like a giant re-education camp.
If I was a foreign power and I wanted to comprehensively take down America, I could scarcely imagine a better way of doing it than C-19, which was all about abrogating one’s individualism for the greater good.
Viewed through that lens, things start to make sense for me – (but I do have an overactive imagination).
“At this point every aspect of the American way of life is under attack – its history, culture, myths, politics, traditions, individualism, liberty etc. have been deconstructed and demolished to make way for communitarianism – like a giant re-education camp.”
Inadvertently or not if you swap ‘British’ for ‘American’ this sentence would equally apply to this country.
If one goes with the theory of some type of movement (whether Davos, whether China, Russia, 5th columns within), it makes sense that the greatest effort would be put into undermining the Anglo countries, particularly the US and the UK. They still have the greatest sense of freedom and independence and some semblance of a participatory democracy. It also explains the extraordinay demolition of what I would have considered the free-sprited countries Canada and Australia. I know there’s fight-back there, but the governments there seem to have got away with far too much.
Re Brexit – it was always going to cost, it was always going to be difficult and people are being told it’s not worth it, even though it is about the country’s ability to determine its future.
At the same time, we are told that going hungry, going cold, sitting in the dark, possibly even engaging in WWIII is a price worth paying for Ukraine, a country which has nothing to do with Europe other than that it is now funneling organised crime and black-market weapons into the EU in unprecedented levels. Not to mention all the outrage about Trump’s wall at the southern border, yet not a peep about a very similar looking wall being put up in Poland… hypocrites.
Absolutely, but we’re not the superpower. If C19 was a sinister plot (and to some degree we all think it was) then to me, ending the US’s superpower status would seem to be a prize great enough to justify it.
Wokeism arose in US universities I think to begin with, then we had BLM, defund the police, with the Pied Piper of Trumplin to lead the nationalists down the garden path (while he set Warp Speed in motion). Now we have mass shootings being used as a pretext to take the guns and very soon the US military will find itself in the nexus of a war on two fronts, in which it will surely be defeated. It’s all pointing to the same thing: a Soviet-style collapse and being made an example of. China will own the next century and doesn’t want any competitors! As much as I think the WEF goons are criminal lunatics who need arresting and locking up, I don’t think they run the world. I think they run the West.
Excellent piece and I enjoy the Dutch Euro perspective. It would appear tongues were wagging prior to Bozo’s surrender.
I think we are for it.
So Nadhim will we now see withdrawal from the futile proxy war with Russia so we can start buying oil, gas, petrol, wheat, fertiliser, repeal of the Climate Change Act, carbon tax abolished, new licences for gas and coal fired power stations, an end to subsidies to ‘renewables’, abandonment of the Net Zero lunacy, fracking licences. the necessary monetary and fiscal policies to lower inflation?
Listening to the Fat One’s speech I didn’t realise ‘we’d never had it so good’… and what a fabulous job he’s been doing.
‘So Nadhim will we now see withdrawal from the futile proxy war with Russia so we can start buying oil, gas, petrol, wheat, fertiliser, repeal of the Climate Change Act, carbon tax abolished, new licences for gas and coal fired power stations, an end to subsidies to ‘renewables’, abandonment of the Net Zero lunacy, fracking licences. the necessary monetary and fiscal policies to lower inflation?’
These moves would of course instantly put the UK ahead of Western Europe, capital would flow into the country, defence spending could cut, jobs would be created etc etc etc.
The fact that the opposite will happen I think tells us what we need to know: We are being run into the ground by outside forces and their proxies, the Manchurian candidates who are in the running to be the next ‘Prime Minister.’
I am not yet persuaded by the China angle CG but in all other respects I concur.
Well it’s a new idea to me too. But they pushed the pandemic button, introduced the world to lockdowns and are largest funders of the WHO…
Bojo and his gang pushed the UK’s pandemic button, albeit with more than a little immoral support from WHO controller Bill Gates.
See my reply to crisisgarden.
It seems Manchuria is not where it used to be.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful. Yes, it could be pulled back from the brink, but I despair at the sheer stupidity/blindness/disinterest of the British people. I am amazed that people talk about ‘when interest rates come down’, ‘where we will fly to this winter for skiing, or which Costa for a summer holiday next year’. Also ‘when petrol prices come down’ and ‘when the NHS gets back to normal’. Are these people really that daft? I sit here wondering if I have made sufficient plans and purchases to keep us warm and fed this winter, and others seem totally unaware that (to my mind) armaggedon has already started. What really worries me is the amount of compliance. It is frightening that we now know that if the government tells the population to do something to their own detriment, most of them will happily do it. What if we get a government whose agenda is to do just that? What will it take to wake people up? We used to be such a stroppy lot. What happened?
Anybody else imagining the runners and riders polishing their CV’s and answering these questions in the mirror ready for the Davos interview:
1. What is your biggest achievement to date?
2. What is your strongest attribute?
3. What is your weakest?
And so on.
Sunak: 1. I bankrupted the country. 2. I’m black and non British. 3. I don’t tell lies as well as Bozo.
Jabbit: I injected 40 million with the toxic juice. 2. I am from a Pakistani immigtant working class family and black. 3. I am a slaphead.
Truss: 1. encouraging young British men to go to Ukraine to be killed. 2. Geography and I’m also a very good liar. 3. Geography- which supports 2. above.
We could have some fun with this.
Sir Desmond Swayne is supporting the candidacy of Suella Braverman, lockdown sceptics both.
The might of the Daily Sceptic lobby should fall in behind them.
A” lockdown sceptic” who didn’t feel so strongly about it that she actually resigned.
I noticed that. Odd for him to declare so early on – he is usually more measured.
I don’t know much about her but she voted with the government on Plan B so hardly a lockdown sceptic. What has she said or done to make you think she is?
If memory serves me right, she wrote one or two rather good and rather sceptical pieces in the papers. I doubt the gallant Sir Desmond (Lockdown legend) would be on her team otherwise.
I can find no evidence of this, nor do I have any recollection of it. She seems to have followed the government line at every step. Perhaps Swayne thinks covid is over and that Braverman has other good qualities.
The state of this nation is encapsulated in the fact that the deaths of thousands of the elderly and infirm as a consequence of the hospital clearances in 2020 is mentioned nowhere as a reason for this dreadful man’s political demise.
He should have gone then. Many previous Prime Ministers (pre 1990) would have.
My general feeling is that the Cons have done to Bojo what the Republicans did to Trump which is probably the end of them for a while.
Unfortunately for the Cons they won’t have Joe Biden f*cking things up and giving them a fighting chance like he is for the Republicans.