The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Boris on the brink, petrol price protests and a £3,000 swear word

issue 09 July 2022

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Rishi Sunak resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Sajid Javid as Health Secretary. (Nadhim Zahawi accepted the post of Chancellor and Steve Barclay, the PM’s chief of staff, Health Secretary.) The resignations came five days after Chris Pincher, aged 52, the MP for Tamworth, resigned as deputy chief whip the morning after he ‘drank far too much’ at the Carlton Club where he was alleged to have groped two men. Then began questions of what Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, knew and when. Mr Pincher had the whip removed as a member of the parliamentary Conservative party, and said: ‘I will benefit from professional medical support.’ He had previously stood down from the whips’ office in 2017, after being accused of making an unwanted pass at the former Olympic rower and Conservative activist Alex Story, but he was cleared of any breach of the Tory party’s code of conduct.

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