‘Back anyone but Rishi’: that’s the message behind No 10’s hints at betrayal

theguardian.com:

I was number three on the day that Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak began the tsunami of resignations by ministers and office holders that led, inevitably, to Boris Johnson’s demise. In my resignation letter I pointed to a nuanced piece I had written for the Guardian in February. In it, I suggested that should the prime minister quit, he would have been able to do so with his head held high, reflecting on his achievements in office. I can no longer write in those terms.

Nothing speaks more to character than the way it is displayed at the end. We learn that in its dying days, this premiership has supposedly taken to bringing down Rishi Sunak, frontrunner in the race to replace the caretaker of Downing Street. Backroom gremlins and hobgoblins – feel for them as they clear their desks – have been putting it about that the former chancellor has been plotting and scheming for months. It’s reported that Johnson has even been urging candidates as they are knocked off the slate to back anyone but Rishi. His chief lieutenants are most certainly at it. At their hands, that most toxic of poisons – the insinuation of betrayal – is eddying around the corridors of Westminster and, its sorcerers hope, will spill from the precincts as the contest reaches the wider Conservative party.

Well, I can only speak as I find.

Several months ago, when he was riding high, I asked to see the then chancellor. My purpose was to beg him to start an insurgency against the rolling chaos of No 10. In his room behind the Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons, adjacent to the prime ministerial suite, he listened to me in his typically courteous way and felt my pain. But despite every inducement, he remained steadfastly loyal to Boris Johnson. My purpose