(paywall) Boris Johnson struck first against Theresa May to avoid being Brexit fall guy
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/thwarted-johnson-struck-first-to-avoid-being-brexit-fall-guy-2qpw5scxr
Theresa May had left No 10 and arrived in her Maidenhead constituency when one of her political team called her away to take an urgent call early on Friday evening.
She had had a draining day overseeing the manhunt for the Parsons Green bomber and was due to announce that the national terrorism threat level was being raised.
The prime minister listened in silence as she was told that Boris Johnson’s office had just emailed a 4,200-word article setting out his vision for Brexit.
It was due to be published on The Daily Telegraph’s website within the next few hours, she was told.
Theresa May, attending church with husband Philip in Maidenhead,
had conferred with aides over the foreign secretary’s article.
In fact she already knew.
Mr Johnson had spoken to her earlier in the day to alert her.
The foreign secretary had considered pulling the article when he saw the news about Britain’s fifth terrorist attack of the year
but decided to push ahead as it became obvious that there had been no fatalities.
He called Mrs May to explain himself
< must have been an interesting conversation 
>
“It was a fait accompli,”
one figure involved said.
“There was no attempt to get him to pull it and no offer from him to compromise on contents.”
The next day Mrs May and her team had to decide how to respond to his challenge to her authority,
days before her own speech in Florence on Friday.
She had two choices:
to sack him < she is really powerless if she can't do that soon >
or to insist that although his intervention was regrettable there was no substantial breach of cabinet collective responsibility.
Damian Green, the de facto deputy prime minister, < how many voters have even heard of him ? >
Robbie Gibb, Mrs May’s new director of communications,
and Gavin Barwell, her chief of staff, are all likely to have been consulted about what to do.
In fact Mr Gibb thought that he had headed off the danger after Mr Johnson agreed to pull a speech on Brexit
when it became obvious that it would overshadow the second reading of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill this month.
A deal to delay until after Mrs May’s own address came apart
when Mr Johnson found that there had been an informal meeting of cabinet ministers to discuss its contents on Thursday
while he was on a visit to the Caribbean after Hurricane Irma.
< his pesky day job getting in the way of his career >
Alarmed that he was being cut out, he demanded reassurance from Downing Street that Mrs May was not about to “sell the pass” on the Brexit “divorce bill”.
When No 10 refused to rule out a lengthy and expensive transition from the bloc,
Mr Johnson reached for the draft of his undelivered speech and phoned his former employers at The Daily Telegraph. < temper >
Challenged on Saturday by Tory MPs, Mr Johnson protested injured innocence.
He said he had simply wanted to be “sunny” about Brexit.
To calm nerves he agreed to send a supportive tweet:
“Looking forward to PM’s Florence speech.
All behind Theresa for a glorious Brexit.”
Few in Westminster are fooled by the insouciant tone adopted by either side.
“Boris is f@@@ed,” a minister said.
“He’s not coming back from this — and perhaps that’s the point, he doesn’t really want to.”
It has been an open secret in Whitehall that Mr Johnson was becoming discontented by his role in the Foreign Office.
He was briefly enthused by Donald Trump and believed he had found a role as an interlocutor with an administration that shared his anarchic spirit and enthusiasm for Brexit.
President Trump’s response to clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white supremacists and counter-protesters forced a final reassessment.
The departure from the White House of Steve Bannon, with whom Mr Johnson had forged a good working relationship, closed a route into the administration.
Mr Johnson’s frustration with Brexit continued to grow,
meanwhile, along with questions over his utility as foreign secretary at a time when the key foreign policy questions were being determined in No 10.
He has become increasingly sensitive to the claim that he wilfully misled voters
over Britain’s EU budget contribution and what additional sums might be available to public services after Brexit.
Early in Mrs May’s government the foreign secretary raised the issue, saying that voters had been promised more cash for the NHS.
“That was your promise, Boris,”
Philip Hammond, the chancellor, shot back,
“not ours.”
Sir David Norgrove, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, rebuked Mr Johnsonin a letter for repeating in his article on Saturday the claim that £350 million a week could be freed up.
Now with the prospect of a “divorce bill” settling in the region of £30 billion to £40 billion,
Mr Johnson fears that he is in line to take the brunt of any backlash from Leave voters
who might feel betrayed by the reality
that public services will not experience any Brexit uplift until 2022 at the earliest.
< and the likely post-Brexit recession >
Mr Johnson has made clear that he is not willing to be party to a betrayal.
< he's already party to a Suez-class cockup & national humiliation >