laughs. she keeps asking me questions! despite mess after mess, borisjohnson was adamant he'd stay in number 10. but even the great survivor couldn't stop his downfall. them's the breaks. tonight, what on earth went on? good morning, colleagues. thank you very much. it was no secret that boris johnson had been in trouble. but the cameras in cabinet were meant to show business as usual. we are now able to introduce, as of tomorrow, the single biggest tax cut in a decade. he didn't know, but two men at the table were thinking about when to quit. on that tuesday morning, i hadn't totally made up my mind but it was really — you know, i was really wrestling with it. i had started thinking about, you know, maybe i'd had enough in terms of what i could put up with and to go and see the prime minister, and just tender my resignation, because i don't think you can work for someone that you haven't got confidence in any more. it's just a principle value that i have. i think for some time we've been aware that it was getting more and more challenging, and people's patience was being stretched. we all knew that this, we were in very tricky territory, all knew that there were all sorts of storm clouds gathering and, and that it was going to be difficult. thank you very much, cheers, thank you. the prime minister has made a career of scraping through scandals — for some voters, his flaws are part of his appeal. so, what was it this time that would mean the end? newsreel: the conservative deputy chief whip has - resigned from government, saying that he drank far too much last night and embarrassed himself and other people. a relatively obscure member of the government, chris pincher, was in the news for all the wrong reasons, accused of groping two men at a private club. he denies it. the big problem — there had been other claims. we get to this week... the pincher episode is growing and growing. it went from the sort of third item on the news agenda to the top of the agenda, partly because of the way we handled it. borisjohnson had been told of a similar complaint before he'd given chris pincher a job in his team. but that wasn't the story given to ministers to tell the rest of us. i've been given a categorical assurance that the prime minister was not aware of any specific allegation or complaint made against the former deputy chief whip chris pincher. it took a former civil servant to force the government to tell the truth. the categorical assurance was wrong. what do you make of that? i do not think that i is the way to behave. i found the...the allegations concerning the former deputy chief whip and then the response to that, i just... i'm afraid it was... i'd reached the end of the road. a minister was sent out badly briefed with things which turned out to be untrue, and clearly you can't lie your way through crises, you've got to tell the truth. someone who was a senior minister until a few days ago at least told me you could argue that the mess around chris pincher was sordid but not disastrous — yet it confirmed a view for most people round here that the downing street operation just wasn't working. and it riled them because it wasn't the first time that no 10 had responded to a problem with a version of events that ministers were instructed to repeat on tv that a few days later turned out not to be true. downing street's version of events had unravelled. borisjohnson had to admit it was wrong. day after day after day, people speaking on your behalf were talking rubbish. i think, well, i don't know, i wasn't... i, i... i was i'm afraid focusing on other things at the time but what i'm telling you now is my recollection of events. what i was being told, _ whether it was on parties or other things, from people working in no 10, some people, was, you know,j they're trying to reassure me, - listen, there's nothing to see here, it's not a problem. so, i gave the benefit of the doubt. i was sent out to do the media rounds every so often. you'd go on to talk about something that was really important, you were really excited about, you know, hoped was going to make a real difference, and, and it got, it got sort of side—tracked into discussions about other things. ministers clearly began to think that they couldn't rely on the briefings they were being given by no 10. once you reach that point, it really is over, and so we've seen. the conservative party had been here before. it had barely recovered from the intense embarrassment over parties during lockdown under boris johnson's roof. remember at the start, we were all told no rules had been broken at all. all guidance was followed completely. i have been repeatedly assured that there was no party and that no covid rules were broken. yet, in the end, there was evidence of booze, parties and late nights while the country was in lockdown. the prime minister himself was found to have broken the rules, and broken the law. i paid the fine immediately and i offered the british people a full apology. some mps had already tried to shove him out. you have sat there too long for all the good you have done. in the name of god, go. the reason i came to that view was because i thought, actually, there was no doubt that boris was misleading the house, was attempting to wriggle out of responsibility for things, and i took the view that there would be a pipeline of problems, notjust one problem, but a pipeline of problems, coming down the track. we would just return to this issue time and time and time again. anger over parties in no 10 left a smouldering fear of more scandal to come. some ministers had been embarrassed, unhappy for months. and two disastrous by—election results made things worse. it's time to show boris the door. but once no 10's untruths about chris pincher emerged, it was time for some cabinet ministers to strike. rishi sunak is no longer chancellor, suggesting borisjohnson isn't competent or serious. while sajid javid resigns from health, questioning the prime minister's integrity. i got my resignation letter ready, i signed it, but i wasn't going to tell anyone other than the prime minister first. i went to see him, and he was in parliament, in his office there. and i explained to him that i will be resigning now, i've resigned and obviously he didn't want me to, but he understood. instantly i thought, this is serious. i think if you lose your, your health secretary and your chancellor, that for me, that was definitely the moment where it was, it was game over. it had taken less than ten minutes for borisjohnson to lose two of his most senior colleagues. i thought it was odd of them to have resigned in an orchestrated way that they did. i also think when people start talking about their own integrity, you want to be quite suspicious about that. are you accusing them of betraying borisjohnson? i mean you'd have to sort of believe anything if you thought that the resignations weren't coordinated. i had no idea that he was planning to resign. we hadn't had any, not a single discussion about it whatsoever. i had a feeling that other people would follow, uh, because i felt from, especially speaking to some of my sort of more junior colleagues in the weeks previously, there there was a definitely a sense of, why aren't sort of senior members of of the government, you know, cabinet members like myself, doing something about this? i was quite stunned that there were people who thought that removing the prime minister who's won the biggest majority that we've had since margaret thatcher in less than three years... just the anti—democratic nature of what they are doing alone was enough to alarm me. and i think i was a bit... for me, it was a coup. rishi sunak strongly denies coordinating with sajid javid. but borisjohnson was now in deep, deep trouble. 17 minutes to 8. the drama in westminster across the front pages, of course. the sun says borisjohnson has got a last chance, as it put it, time is running out. the telegraph says the political crisis must now be resolved. the times says game over. by 9.00am, there had already been a dozen resignations. i got to a stage where ijust had to... i couldn't do it any more. and so, i took that decision, and it was impossibly hard to do. not that i ever thought about how i'd write a resignation letter, but i found myself drafting it around the school run on a wednesday morning, that's how, sort of, that's how quick it was. any other prime minister would have headed for the door himself. then boris johnson's old frenemy arrived. michael gove turned up with a message. with so many ministers going, including in his own department, with more to come, it was over. he told his boss he should spare himself the embarrassment of being dragged down by backbenchers. but mrjohnson told him he would fight, and believed he could stay. remember it was michael gove who spiked borisjohnson�*s attempt to become prime minister back in 2016. an awkward echo of the two men's tricky past. later, borisjohnson would reward him with the sack. by the time the prime minister arrived at the commons to face keir starmer, four more people had resigned. then there was prime minister's questions. mr speaker, isn't this the first recorded case of the sinking ships fleeing the rat? it's hard to describe the feeling of the sort of... the cauldron, and the heat and the mood and the atmosphere. and it was obvious then that we were into some irreversible process. it was grim. you know, mps who were shouting to support the prime minister just the week before, were sat there stony faced. we now come to the personal statement. i call sajid javid. the recently departed health secretary piled on the pressure. at some point we have to conclude that enough is enough. i believe that point is now. i have concluded that the problem starts at the top and i believe that that's not going to change. yet at that stage there was no budging borisjohnson. does the prime minister think there are any circumstances in which he should resign? frankly mr speaker, thejob of a prime minister in difficult circumstances, when you've been handed a colossal mandate, is to keep going — and that's what i'm going to do. archive: boris johnson leads the conservatives j to a resounding election victory. we did it, didn't we? we pulled it off, didn't we? the memory of his massive 2019 election victory gave him faith he could survive. protestations in parliament could be drowned out by public support of years before. the fact that he saved us from the constitutional crisis of 2019, took us out of the eu and defeated a very hard left opposition, those were all great, great things which i celebrate, and i would like us to be remembering that that's what borisjohnson achieved, rather than the sordid events of the last week. he is globally respected for what's — the way in which we've handled ukraine and particularly, the vaccine rollout. actually, he will be remembered for getting the big calls right, even if it was the smaller calls which did for him in the end. but you knew boris johnson was flawed when you helped put him in office. everybody�*s flawed. the odd flaw is one thing but a series of intense embarrassments is another. the eye—wateringly expensive decoration of the downing street flat, paid for by a party donor. reporter: are you worried about| the investigation, prime minister? who coughed up for the flat, sir? an attempt to change parliament's rules to save a political pal, 0wen paterson. not one but two ethics advisors who quit, aghast at what was going on. there'd been months of trouble and repeated promises to change. this was becoming a little bit too repetitive. inevitably, i think there is always a point at which people's patience begins to get stretched. i think there was a feeling that this headache is just not going away! some mistakes have been made which are the flip side of the prime minister's personality, that he is a big personality that deals with big issues and, to my mind, he got all the big issues right. 0n the other hand, he is not necessarily the hottest on the small issues. isn't telling the truth also a big issue? no, i don't think that's right. i think the prime minister is a basically truthful man. by mid—afternoon on wednesday, ministers were rushing for the door. it was plain as a pike staff that government was bleeding ministers almost faster than they could replace them. by six o'clock, 38 members of the government had walked away — that's just a staggering number — and members of the cabinet had finally come here to demand that he quit. but borisjohnson wouldn't budge then from what increasingly felt like a bunker, claiming there was still a chance that he could turn things around. one of them present told me number ten were dangling promotions to try to stave off the onslaught, sketching out a reshuffle on a whiteboard in the office. they said it felt number ten believed they could just move things around, sing rule britannia and stick their fingers in their ears and it will all be fine. downing street says all appointments are made on merit. welsh secretary simon hart was one of those who told the boss to go. it was harder than i thought it would be, and it was sadder than i thought it would be. i think the options were pretty limited by then, to be honest and i think boris was probably as aware of that as anybody, but being boris, i think he always thought, you know, "one more roll of the dice and something "miraculous will occur". but i thought we were just past that point. so i did say to him, "look, i think we're — "i think we reached the end of the road." simon hart later resigned himself. the band of borisjohnson supporters was getting smaller but they were still standing by their man. reporter: is anyone else standing behind the prime minister? - oh, yes! i was never going to desert him and i was never going to betray him and my advice, initially, was to fight on. one member of campjohnson told me there was a sense of being bewildered — they were aware they were in trouble but they didn't think it was terminal. and a clutch of cabinet ministers arrived and took that side, too, questioning whether outside this postcode, things were really that bad at all. there were hours of tortured discussion, borisjohnson still telling colleagues he could and should stay, shored up by a dwindling bunch of colleagues. but they were losing the argument. as borisjohnson left the office for his flat upstairs, he was realising the fight was in vain. when the intelligence came in as to who was going to resign the next day and who was going to be handing their letters in, it became apparent we can't withstand this and he made the decision late that night that he would stand down the following morning. after less than three years in thejob he'd craved for a lifetime, by around 5am, borisjohnson had admitted to staff it was over. as i speak to you, i'm getting a call from downing street — the prime minister has agreed to stand down. it had taken nearly 60 members of borisjohnson�*s government resigning to make sure he quit. in the last few days, i've tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we're delivering so much, when we have such a vast mandate and when we're actually only a handful of points behind in the polls. but as we've seen at westminster, the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves it moves, and, my friends in politics, no—one is remotely indispensable. vintagejohnson. those who shoved him out branded "eccentric". little sign of remorse. thank you all very much. thank you. in the end, it's simple — tory mps had just had enough. borisjohnson�*s anarchic style, his devil—may—care attitude had taken him — and them — a long way. it had given them power and opportunity, but many of them were just sick of cleaning up his mess, sick of not being able to trust what was coming out of number ten, sick of downing street's attitude to the truth. the tory circus revolved around borisjohnson for so long but within hours, it was all about who's next, and there was a perfect occasion for the candidates to strut their stuff. reporter: mr hancock, - are you going to throw your hat into the ring, sir? i'm not going to throw my hat into the ring, but i am going to go into the party. on a day like this, it's an extraordinary coincidence that it is the spectator magazine summer party. the spectator is basically the sort of house magazine of the conservative party. it's even the magazine that borisjohnson himself used to edit and on the day that they got rid of him, the top cream of sort of tory society will all be piling into there, along with lots ofjournalists. there are a couple of hundred people, the sort of a—list of the tory party — like michael gove... ah, evening! ..rishi sunak, the chancellor until a few days ago, nadhim zahawi — and they are all in there pressing the flesh, schmoozing, having the odd whisper in the odd ear. there's some very powerful people in there with a lot of money and a lot of influence. borisjohnson�*s leadership was barely over but the race to replace him had already started. nothing is settled — that is the sense this morning as the nation comes to terms with yesterday's events... the tension is so ruthlessly turned to the next big race — who will be the next prime minister? i'm running to be our next prime minister because it's your- stories that matter most. it wasn't long before potential successors showed their hand. the finger was pointed at rishi sunakfor seeming suspiciously well—prepared when his glossy campaign video emerged. yes, we know that some people were organising their campaigns some time beforehand, and that is indicative of ambition, it seems to me. how would you describe, then, what's happened to borisjohnson? i think it's very sad, but it's politics. and it's a bit like in the godfather, when they do unspeakable things. and the business of politics is ensuring that you have a leadership that you want. and i wanted the leadership that was borisjohnson, and i lost, and that is how politics goes. who will be our next prime minister? four have officially put their hats in the ring. by the weekend, more contenders were entering the race. four became six, then seven and more — no shortage of tories bristling with ambition to replace the old boss. and so, it begins — while borisjohnson glowers from behind the black door of number ten, the beauty parade has begun outside. the studios soon filled up with those trying to grab the top job. the sunday morning political encounters is a big shop window for all of the people who are now trying to take over from borisjohnson. how do they say, "i wasn't responsible for any of the bad "bits" but take credit for the good bits? it's just this kind of piccadilly circus. they are all desperate to get on the telly and tell people what they stand for. how long have you been waiting to do this? the contest? yeah. well, i didn't think it was going to happen quite as quickly, actually. chuckles. have fun. thank you. good morning. do you think that the very fact that you have not served in borisjohnson's government helps you in this contest? in one important way yes, because... i was going to say hello. you all right? i'm fine. how are you? you've got one leadership candidate who has just gone off to one lift, while the other person who is trying to be prime minister is sitting in another room waiting to go on. i do hope you'll join me next sunday. in the meantime, enjoy the sunshine. goodbye. after a frantic few days in westminster, the contest to succeed borisjohnson as prime minister will not be settled until september. there are recriminations already about how it started. rishi sunak appears to be in front. sajid javid is out of the running. borisjohnson is bust, but is the tory party too? those vying to take over hope not, but what has he left behind? without question, he is a prime minister that mattered, and always will. he took us out of the european union, and that changed the course of our history. you were never going to getjust, you know, an ordinaryjoe. we all knew that. we knew what boris was like before we voted him. i've heard over the past few days many members of the public saying, "we know what he's like — that's why we voted for him. "we make gaffes. "we make mistakes. "we haven't got perfect lives," so — "and we voted for brexit — "that's why we voted for him." i think we always thought with borisjohnson it was a little bit death or glory. he might — you know, we always knew it was going to be a roller—coaster ride. there was never any doubting his ambition. the last few manic years, politically, belonged to him. yet, there were always doubts about his ability to do the job — his troubled relationship with the truth, his desire to court controversy that sometimes drowned everything else out. the truth is, across the board, it's quite plain that people don't approve of boris' behaviour — that's plainly the case — and, to some extent, they are cross with us for taking so long to deal with it. i hope one day, we can sit down and have a drink together, and... and i'd look forward to it. but, ithink that, you know, we have to step back a bit. we are professionals, we have a duty. and you've got to feel that you have the ability to discharge those responsibilities and i think if you don't have confidence in your boss, it becomes incredibly hard to do just that. boris johnson's chapter ends after countless wild political tales, yet this crazy finale holds no straightforward solutions to the serious problems the country faces now. hello, exceptional heat to come for the uk in the days ahead, the potential for temperatures never recorded before. in response to this, the met office has issued a highest level red warning for the likelihood of disruption due to the heat as it persists through the day and the night monday into tuesday. we certainly start on a warm footing for monday after a fine night. temperatures initiallyjust as the sun comes up will be in the mid to high teens. and then aside from some cloud and patchy rain to the far north of scotland, we have got a day essentially of the sun beating down, adding to the heat, and a southerly airflow pulling up more warm air from the near continent. and then we reach that potential of up to a0 degrees somewhere in central and eastern england, 38 as far north as yorkshire however and across towards the welsh borders. tuesday could be hotter still across some eastern areas. it looks a little fresher towards the west but it will be increasingly humid as well. towards the west but it will be this is bbc news with the latest headlines. an amber warning for extreme heat has begun in england and parts of wales. it is pretty extreme, it is unprecedented temperatures to see sort of a0 degrees forecast for the uk, so that is a0 celsius, 10a fahrenheit, and it is something we've not seen before. thousands of firefighters continue to battle wildfires across europe — many people have died from the intense heat. police repeat warnings about cooling off in open water after the body of a 16—year—old boy is recovered from salford quays. the five remaining candidates for the conservative party leadership will battle it out in their second tv debate later. a cargo plane carrying weapons has crashed in northern greece,