Boris should scrap the Ministerial Code

Last week, Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor – a role that must sit alongside Vlad the Impaler’s anger management therapist in the annals of doomed job descriptions – resigned. Downing Street so far hasn’t commented on whether Lord Geidt will be replaced, with a spokesman saying only that Johnson will ‘take time’ to consider the decision. Well, here’s a hint: you don’t respond to the failure of a chocolate teapot by buying a second one. And while you’re at it, scrap the Ministerial Code too.

For all the Westminster rigmarole currently focused on them, neither of these institutions is particularly old. The Ministerial Code dates back to 1997 and Tony Blair’s election landslide, the ethics advisor to 2006. These are not core structures of the British constitution, in place since time immemorial. They have not proven their worth by resisting centuries of evolutionary pressure. They are recent innovations still in their trial period.