Boris Johnson: The inside story of the prime minister's downfall

Just a week ago, Boris Johnson was insisting he would stay in power. The next day he announced he was quitting, and now the Conservatives are looking to elect a new party leader and prime minister.

So how did everything change so quickly?

Here's the inside story of the prime minister's downfall.

It was no secret that Mr Johnson was in trouble as he welcomed colleagues to the weekly cabinet meeting.

"We are now able to introduce as of tomorrow the single biggest tax cut in a decade," he told ministers. What he didn't realise was that two of the men at the table - Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid - were thinking about when to quit.

"On that Tuesday morning, I hadn't totally made up my mind, but I was really wrestling with it," Mr Javid says.

"I'd started thinking maybe I'd had enough. In of what I could put up [with] and to go and see the prime minister... because I don't think you can work for someone that you haven't got confidence in anymore. It's just a principle value that I have."

Simon Hart, who as Welsh secretary was also in the cabinet meeting, says ministers were aware the situation "was getting more and more challenging and people's patience was being stretched".

"We were in very tricky territory. All knew that there were all sorts of storm clouds gathering and that it was going to be difficult," he adds.

The immediate crisis for the government to deal with was over the behaviour of Conservative MP Chris Pincher. He had resigned as deputy chief whip the previous week, despite denying allegations that he had groped two men at a private ' club.

The big problem for ministers was that there had been other claims about Mr Pincher.

It took the intervention of Lord McDonald, a former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, to force the government to tell the truth.

Mr Johnson had been told of a similar complaint in 2019, before he had given Mr Pincher a job in his team. But that wasn't the story given by No 10 to ministers to tell the rest of us.

"We get to this week [and] the Pincher episode is growing and growing," says former Brexit Secretary David Davis, who called for Mr Johnson to quit as early as January this year.

"It went from the sort of third item on the news agenda to the top of the agenda, partly because of the way we handled it."

Downing Street's version of events had unravelled and Mr Johnson had to it it was wrong.

This followed months of criticism of the prime minister's handling of parties that took place in Downing Street during Covid lockdowns. He had himself been fined by police.

Mr Javid says he could sense a growing discontent among colleagues who were being sent out to defend the government on TV and radio. But they had decided to give No 10 "the benefit of the doubt" after being assured there was "not a problem".

"I was sent out to do the media round every so often," says former Justice Minister Victoria Atkins. "You'd go on to talk about something that was really important.

"You were really excited about that, would hope [it] was going to make a real difference, and it got side-tracked into discussions about other things."

But once No 10's untruths about Mr Pincher emerged, it was time for some cabinet ministers to strike.

Mr Javid resigned first, questioning the prime minister's integrity, followed minutes later by Mr Sunak, who said Mr Johnson was not competent or serious.

"I got my resignation letter ready," says Mr Javid. "I signed it, but I wasn't going to tell anyone other than the PM first."

He says he went to see Mr Johnson and explained to him that he would be "reg now".

"Obviously, he didn't want me to, but he understood."

Were Mr Sunak and Mr Javid's actions co-ordinated?

"I had no idea that he was planning to resign," says Mr Javid. "We hadn't had any, not a single discussion about it whatsoever."

One of Mr Johnson's staunchest allies, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, was furious.

"I was quite stunned that there were people who thought that removing the prime minister who's won the biggest majority that we've had since Margaret Thatcher in less than three years [was acceptable]," she says.

"The anti-democratic nature of what they were doing was enough to alarm me. For me it was a coup."

Mr Johnson was in deep trouble.

By 09:00 there had already been another dozen resignations.

Then Mr Johnson's old frenemy, former Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, arrived with a message for the PM that it was all over and that he should quit to spare himself from the spectacle of being dragged down by backbenchers. Mr Johnson told him he would fight, and believed he could stay.

By the time he arrived at the Commons to face Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for Prime Minister's Questions at midday, four more people had resigned.

Sir Keir made fun of his rival's predicament, calling the resignations "the first recorded case of the sinking ships fleeing the rat".

Tory MP Tim Loughton asked: "Does the prime minister think there are any circumstances in which he should resign":[]}