“It was a bit strange,” said a source at the cabinet meeting Boris Johnson convened on Thursday just two hours after he said he would resign, effectively pausing the UK.
The prime minister was flanked by senior ministers, some of whom, in less than 24 hours, had previously led a delegation of men and women in gray dresses at number 10 to urge him to resign.
In addition to the awkward disjuncture, the meeting included new ministers who had previously been dismissed by Mr. Johnson, either from the cabinet, in the case of Robert Buckland, or from the Conservative Party like Greg Clark.
The paralysis of the Westminster political process had begun the day before in Parliament when a flood of resignations saw the Johnson administration collapse around it.
Law committees that examined legislation line by line had to be canceled, or ministers recently seated in them as MPs had resigned, while whips who did not have the necessary expertise on the issues at stake led the Government. .
As the dust settled on Mr. Johnson’s final decision to leave, Conservative MPs walked through Parliament lamenting how to get out of their leader, comparing him to Donald Trump.
“It’s a shame it happened that way, I should have left yesterday,” a loyal MP said to the end.
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The grassroots Conservatives expressed similar concerns, with Philip Sagar, vice-president of the Grantham and Stamford Conservative Association, telling me, “I died scared last night of not giving up. It all seemed a bit trumpy.”
But the fact that the prime minister has finally given in to political gravity has not meant the end of his concerns. Conservative fears are now directed at the electoral effect on his party of a stagnant government.
A minister who resigned this week said Johnson should leave immediately and let Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab take over so the government can address urgent issues such as the cost of living crisis.
Failure to do so could drop even more in the polls, they suggested, as the party’s hopes of being saved electorally because Sir Keir Starmer had to resign for violating Covid’s rules were thwarted by Durham police. .
“It would be better if we had a clean break from Johnson, especially now that Raab isn’t running,” they said.
Warning that Conservatives must be prepared for early elections if a new leader moves radically away from Johnson’s 2019 manifesto, another minister who resigned told me, “It can’t be a vacuum.
“We need to get a leadership result as soon as possible, but it can’t be a coronation.
“The most important position right now is number 11 and punctuation [Chancellor] Nadhim [Zahawi] a lot. But we still need top speed for the leader’s final result. “
A third former minister warned there would be “problems ahead” because Mr Johnson had not left immediately, saying they “subscribe to Dominic Cummings’ view” that the prime minister could still try to withdraw from his resignation.
“You have to catch the train that came out of the man who had just tried to throw him down a cliff,” they said.
Candidates for the post of prime minister, when Mr Johnson leaves, have been preparing for a month-long contest as writing has been slowly drawn on the wall at number 10.
Tom Tugendhat, Penny Mordaunt and Jeremy Hunt were the most active candidates this week, contacting MPs and arranging meetings.
A senior Conservative MP said the three had contacted during the hours following the prime minister’s resignation, but none of the cabinet’s main contenders.
“No one is welcome. I would take any of them above Boris.”
Another said Mr Tugendhat had invited a group of colleagues to talks. Ms Mordaunt was also pushing “very hard,” the deputy said.
Attention is also drawn to the question of who will be supported by the big beasts in the cabinet who do not compete in the leadership race. A source who knows Michael Gove, a possible creator of kings, said he “thinks very well” of Mr Tugendhat and could support him for leadership.
They said Mr Tugendhat was making the run early and receiving “a lot of talk” among MPs, and that even the 2019 Red Wallers could give him his vote.
Another conservative source said: “I think there’s some surprise that so many people are polling on being leaders themselves; some of the people you might expect might be on a dream ticket, like Kemi. [Badenoch].
“They could be positioning themselves to be a key partner in the formula. It’s as if Boris opened the race for the first time since 2005. It’s really about letting a thousand flowers bloom.”
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As the aspirants for leadership clashed, Whitehall’s guilt game began with Mr. Johnson’s spectacular fall into disgrace. The Prime Minister completely overhauled his inner circle in February, after the initial allegations of the “Partygate” were broken, and it is largely this team that will guide the Government during the last months of his term as Prime Minister.
But even experts have not been deeply impressed by the operation. One person who worked closely with team number 10 told me, “It’s disconcerting, you can never figure out what they’re trying to do.”
Steve Barclay, chief of staff at Downing Street until he replaced Sajid Javid as secretary of health on Tuesday evening, was widely respected, but was overwhelmed as he juggled his No. 10 role with being Minister of Health. cabinet office and deputy.
The arrival of Guto Harri, one of Johnson’s oldest allies, as communications director is seen by many as a collaborator in the fall of the prime minister.
Nicknamed “the Welsh magician” by his colleagues, Harri took a free approach to his work: the day Mr. Johnson faced a vote of censure, asked a large group of reporters, “Is there anyone here who has … not been angry at their lives?”
The turn leader had a habit of inventing policies by hand, and made advisers in other departments joke about “Guto’s special” when faced with unexpected announcements of the number 10. An official from Whitehall concluded, “It’s good for journalists, me.” I’m not sure it’s good for HMG [Her Majesty’s Government]. ”
In addition to communications issues, government advisers have been concerned about a sense of political drift even before Johnson came to an end.
Munira Mirza’s resignation as political director, and her replacement by billionaire MP Andrew Griffith, was “like changing Thatcher for Mr Bean,” a colleague said.
Another conservative source described Mr. Harri as a “clown,” adding, “There are people who work completely independently, there are people who don’t like each other, who don’t understand each other.
“Barclay, Guto and Canzini are not a team in any relationship. If you don’t have a computer, you’re fucked. “
But others nail the ultimate guilt to Mr. Johnson’s door.
One of Johnson’s closest former advisers told me that “everything went wrong for the Prime Minister” when he stopped listening to those on Vote Leave.
The source added that the run up to the fall of the prime minister was “crazy”.
“There’s no way he’s allowed to stay in office. That’s exactly how November 2020 went, that’s why we walked. People can now see the challenges we faced on a daily basis while trying to navigate Covid Peak.” .
One of the former ministers who resigned simply said on Thursday: “It’s all his fault. I spent months defending, or at least being generous with their mistakes.
“Not after the last 24 hours. Scary.”