Iain Martin reports that Johnson’s surprise announcement not to stand for leadership of the Conservative Party was the result of a “cuckoo in the nest” plot hatched by his former ally Michael Gove. Under the scheme they had hatched, Gove was supposed to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Johnson premiership. But Gove had other ideas, and apparently orchestrated a mass defection from Johnson’s camp.
Then this morning, with the Boris spech [sic] written and ready to go, at 9.02 a.m. the bombshell email from Gove to reporters landed and then hit Twitter. Almost instantly around forty Tory MPs switched straight to Gove. It was almost as though it had been planned…
“Never seen anything like it. We had been cleaned out. There was a cuckoo in the nest,” says a Boris loyalist. The man himself is crushed and disconsolate. A lifetime of pretending to be a shambles, while preparing for the premiership, leads him to a set of circumstances that would even have foxed Churchill.
In other words, behind the innocent facade of a man who doesn’t even know how to clap his hands is a real killer.