A double cabinet resignation is a blow Boris is unlikely to survive

So it has started. The joint resignation of Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid marks a cabinet coup against Boris Johnson, seeking to remove him without the need for a parliamentary revolt. ‘This will be a cabinet thing, not a party thing,’ one minister told me earlier: ‘Someone will have to resign, then others will be faced with a choice.’ That someone turned out to be Javid, who quit as Health Secretary this evening with Sunak following 20 minutes later. Johnson is in survival mode, telling Tory MPs that ‘cutting taxes now somewhat easier” now that debt-averse Sunak has gone. Within hours, Nadhim Zahawi – who has a more elastic view about borrowing limits – was named the new Chancellor.

Zahawi’s appointment came after an all-out campaign to find loyalists, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg who says voters chose Johnson as PM so Cabinet members cannot dethrone him. Michael Gove wants Johnson gone – but knifed him once before and feels he can’t do so again.