Johnson has fired Gove

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Couldn't have happened to a nicer chap.

The Conservatives will accept all kinds of faults in a leader that wins elections. When a leader starts losing votes they start sharpening the knives. The by-election losses were the tipping point.

He's such a hipocrit it's like a repeat of Trump's tantrum all over again.

HIGNFY this morning, although this has given me the horrible thought that he might be on the TV rather than Nadine tomorrow morning.

For those MN political nerds...

i think it almost beats the peak of Suella Braverman this evening for sheer comedy genuis.

twitter.com/TomHourigan/status/1544810671191228416?t=UvSXKkRu2C5xtFLXFJ4kJQ&s=19

In case you missed it, Newsnight replaced its end credits tonight with a list of all the ministerial resignations so far set to an acoustic version of Bittersweet Symphony

That is brilliant!

On comedy notes... anyone else enjoying Adam Rutherford's review of the formatting conventions of resignation letters? minus points for illegibility, no address, cropping own signature, 2 pages or right margin justification...

Henry Zeffman AT hzeffman
Presumably Boris Johnson sacks Suella Braverman tonight or first thing tomorrow (after all James Duddridge told us there were lots of people desperate to serve)

Either way, it's attorney general questions at 10am in the Commons tomorrow.

And Braverman's no 2 quit yesterday

Ah nothing says 'im still in charge' like having to choose between keeping a cabinet minister who said on national tv that she thinks you should quit and she is going after your job or keeping the same woman on because if you ditch her there is no one else left in the department to do government business...

Also see:

George Peretz QC AT georgeperetzqc
A government lawyer I know is currently working out how/whether they can get a statutory instrument laid tomorrow when their department doesn’t have any ministers left .

Maybe the Tories should just leave him too it, and see how long before the public goes nuts.

Or

Daniel Hewitt at danielhewittITV
We were told there would be new appointments by No10 tonight. Think we can assume there won’t be now…

And there are now no ministers left in that department. The people who work there must be wondering if they've still got a job.

What's that old saying; it's not the crime, its the cover up. Or something like that.
I think the lies and the backtracking by Boris Johnson on this issue was just too much for some Tory MPs and has pushed them over the edge.

This is the timeline of what happened, I think, and I think this time some Tory Mps can't "spin" it.

Wednesday 29 June
Chris Pincher drunkenly gropes men (or correctly known as sexually assault)

Thursday 30 June
Chris Pincher resigns as deputy chief whip.
Boris Johnson doesn't accept the resignation.

Friday 1 July
Previous sexual assault allegations start to come out
No 10 official statement says Chris Pincher is now suspended and Johnson wasn't aware of allegations before appointing Pincher as Deputy Chief Whip.

Monday 4 July
Tory MP Will Quince does the press thing in the morning. He states categorically that Boris Johnson has given him assurance that he wasn't aware of specific previous allegations against Chris Pincher. And BJ states there have been no formal complaints against CP.

It later came out, there had been a formal complaint against CP, there was a formal misconduct hearing in 2019, about inappropriate behaviour and CP had been found "guilty".

Tuesday 5 July.
Dominic Raab is now doing the press thing in the morning.
He categorically states BJ told him he was not directly briefed about this misconduct hearing, so wasn't aware of this formal complaint.

30 mins later,
Sir Simon Mcdonald, diplomat, said this wasnt true and BJ was directly briefed about the formal allegations and the outcomebifvthe misconduct hearing in 2019.

No 10 then wittered on about Boris Johnson "forgetting" he had been briefed about Chris Pincher's formal complaint misconduct hearing prior to promoting him as Deputy Chief Whip.

And here we are.

No, but it seems to have been pretty grim judging from the reactions of those who were present. There was an interview on earlier with one of his previous victims who said Pincher had basically suddenly dived for his balls and started cupping them.

That Four Seasons tweet is fabulous Red but @Ncwinc has a moment of wisdom with It’s like clowns getting out of a tiny car

That was basically because Campbell really laid into him. It would have been much more dignified to ignore him.

He said on Peston he felt that the Man Next Door would have resigned after a day like today.

I don’t get the Four seasons tweet 😮😫

They've all turned their phones off. If asked, they will have suffered an inexplicable loss of signal which meant that they knew nothing about any calls, what a shame.

Stephen Bush AT stephenkb
Telegraph leader says that the Palace would and should refuse the PM a dissolution.

Cant call an election without Queens approval.

I wouldn't put it past him to poison her to distract attention.

@Nolongerteaching they were the accidental hosts of the farcical Rudy Guilliani press conference in the death throes of the Trump administration

Rudy Giuliani gave a press conference for Trump in the car park of the garden centre, they thought they'd booked a hotel of the same name allegedly.

Loving the clownfall hashtag on Twitter tonight.

When no one else would speak for Trump in his final hissy fit stage, Rudy Giuliani booked a press conference at the “Four Seasons.” He thought it was the hotel. Except it was actually Four Seasons Total Landscaping. A unit next to a warehouse that sold porn. He then gave this utterly incoherent and bizarre press conference to the world's press.

Its a moment of total political farce and ridiculousness which is hard to explain or compare anything with.

However Boris Johnson is currently doing a fine attempt.

I have to say whoever Four Seasons have on their social media and pr is bloody fantastic. It'll be lost on America but wow that tweet was good.

Its about the fiasco of Trump.

Back in 2020, it was announced that Trump had lost the election.

The Trump team announced they were having a press conference at the 4 Seasons.

Everyone assumed it was at the 4 Seasons Hotel.

It wasn't. Someone buggered up the booking, it was a small business called the 4 Seasons Landscaping.

So, there they were; Rudy Giuliani and a whole press pack, standing in a small car park between a sex shop and a crematorium

I think it was my favourite moment of the US 2020 election 😁