Booting Boris was a catastrophic error

To call it a shambles is an insult to the many perfectly respectable shambles that take place each day up and down this fine land. Yesterday’s performance across Westminster and Whitehall by the Conservative and Unionist party will surely be remembered for many years as the textbook example of the nadir to which a dysfunctional, divided and woefully-led governing party can plummet.

The preposterous levels of self-belief exhibited by the Prime Minister across the despatch box made for a disquieting opening act, to be followed by the loss of yet another occupant of a great office of state and then, with grim inevitability, utterly farcical scenes in the voting lobbies and the whips office. We can now say definitively that the defenestration of Boris Johnson by Conservative MPs was a mistake, despite his own frequent association with shambolic episodes. What has followed is far, far worse than anything over which the blond bombshell presided.