has worked with johnson in the past and welcome to you all. sir peter is also author of they call it diplomacy. and now a big welcome to all including keir, first of all, boris johnson fiercely fighting this for weeks. so what finally pushed him to this decision? reporter: yeah, well, i think in the end it became inevitable, andrea, just to give you an example the morning news show on the radio this morning that is an opinion leader, if you like, said seven ministers have resigned and had to correct themselves, we mean seven ministers have resigned since we ve been on air. it was an avalanche of people walking away, and boris johnson losing more than a quarter of his government. so we just saw this dramatic
and then, of course, when there is a new leader, who will that leader be and will they have the authority on the world stage when they haven t stood for an election here in the uk? the international implications, the kremlin says it hopes for more professional people from the british government. the russian foreign office describing boris johnson as going because he was hit by his own boomerang and saying the moral of the story is not to seek to destroy russia. that is not the moral of the story. the moral of the story domestically is boris johnson just got caught out bluntly lying again and again, and, in the end, the question was over his integrity and his own party decided he did not have the integrity to be prime minister, andrea. it s just extraordinary. peter, you had this stellar career to the very heights of the foreign service ending as the ambassador to the u.s.