In the headlines
He’s “Boris Gone-son”, tweets the FT’s Jim Pickard. In his resignation speech this afternoon, the PM said he had tried to convince his colleagues it would be “eccentric” to change leaders at such a turbulent time, but “them’s the breaks”. Johnson sacked Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove last night for telling him to quit, but after another flurry of resignations this morning – including the Education Secretary Michelle Donelan, who had been in the job just 36 hours – he finally bowed to the inevitable. Many leading Tories want an interim PM until the party has elected a new leader in the autumn, says The Times’s Steven Swinford on Twitter, but Johnson said he would stay in No 10 until his successor is chosen. “This could get very messy.”