The Guardian view on the cabinet resignations: endgame for Boris Johnson

theguardian.com:

The prime minister’s dissembling, his taste for obfuscation and self-serving half-truths, and his willingness to mislead are by now sadly familiar. To that extent, it came as no surprise on Tuesday to learn that Boris Johnson had indeed – despite multiple assertions to the contrary – been told of specific sexual misconduct allegations prior to appointing Chris Pincher as deputy chief whip. But sooner or later a tipping point was coming for ministers obliged to trash their own reputations to defend a dishonest, delinquent prime minister. On Tuesday night it came.

The seemingly coordinated resignations of the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and the health secretary, Sajid Javid, surely signal that the waters are closing over Mr Johnson’s premiership. It had already become clear that a succession of scandals – and above all the prime ministerial contempt for the public demonstrated by Partygate – had done irreparable damage to Mr Johnson’s standing. But it took Tuesday’s extraordinary, devastating intervention by Simon McDonald, a former top civil servant at the Foreign Office, to convince Mr Sunak and Mr Javid to act.

Lord McDonald has spent a distinguished career exercising discreet influence at the top of government, advising foreign secretaries and prime ministers. His decision to publicly refute Mr Johnson’s version of events in relation to Mr Pincher was a highly unusual move made in exceptional circumstances. Exasperated by a prime minister whose claims he knew from direct experience not to be true, Lord McDonald decided to dispense with etiquette and demolish Downing Street’s defence of Mr Pincher’s appointment. In doing so, he starkly confronted Mr Johnson’s cabinet with its own complicity in propping up a premiership that