When I bumped into Sajid Javid this evening just before 6pm, I said to him, “If anyone’s got the balls to quit, it’s you, isn’t it?” The Health Secretary simply smiled. Within minutes, as he posted on Twitter his withering resignation letter, it was clear why.
Rishi Sunak’s own decision to quit shortly afterwards felt like a co-ordinated move, with two of the most senior figures in the Government dealing a body blow to Boris Johnson’s premiership. It’s unclear if there will be a further domino effect within Cabinet or among other ministers, but the Prime Minister looks like a dead man walking.
Javid was the man seen as most likely to jump first precisely because he had done it before. It was in February 2020, when Johnson bowed to pressure from Dominic Cummings to give No 10 control over Treasury advisers, that the then Chancellor resigned in protest. At the time, Johnson begged his colleague to stay. “Please don’t do this to me, Saj,” he said. Javid still resigned on a point of principle – the right to appoint his own team.
Now, Sunak, the man who was thrust into the limelight as the Covid pandemic hit, has himself quit in exasperation at both the PM’s approach to standards in public life and his tendency to mislead when caught out. It’s a double resignation that is even more of a double whammy than the twin by-election defeats of a week ago.
Intriguingly, both Javid and Sunak are seen as ambitious for the top job themselves. Though disloyalty is frowned on usually, they may both get “first mover” advantage in a future leadership race, with credit for taking a stand. One MP told me this week that they were always sent a text on their birthday by Javid, who was also assiduous in sending Christmas cards to huge numbers of colleagues.