So farewell Boris Johnson, you had your chance

In the end even Boris had to admit there was no way forward, no cunning constitutional plan that would allow him to stay as Britain's prime mimister until the next election in 2024 and beyond. He just had to go, although he seems to imagine he can stay in Number 10 until October by which time the next leader of the Conservative Party and replacement prime minister will have been found and anointed. Whether he is able to stay that long seems highy unlikely which probably means we will have to put up with someone like Dominic Raab, Justice Secretary and formerly Foreign Secretary and theoretically deputy prime minister, for the next three months. Boris's departure was yet another example of the brutal way the Conservative Party deals with its leaders when they fall by the wayside. Margaret Thatcher was driven from Downing Street by a kabal of plotting ministers, and in the same way the men in suits, well mostly men, turned up at Number 10 to tell Boris that it was time for him to go. He appeared to have few friends left in the Cabinet. Michael Gove yet again played his hands badly when it came to handling Boris. He told him to go and was promptly sacked for disloyalty. I doubt Boris's replacement will want Gove in his or her Cabinet. Boris sacked him not just because he could never forget how his supposed friend had failed way back to support his leadership campaign and ran against him but because it would prevent Gove from delivering a withering resignation speech to Parliament. Tradition dictates a minister who resigns can if he or she wants to, make a farewell speech to the Commons. Sir Geoffrey Howe, Foreign Secretary in Thatcher's Cabinet, resigned and told the Commons he could no longer bat for her team. It finished Maggie off and soon she was leaving Downing Street in her official Jaguar with a tear in her eye. I doubt Boris will shed tears. He won't give his opponents the satisfaction. But his time is over after only three years in office and whether he stays as a lame duck prime minister until October or not, his yearning ambition to be seen as one of Britain's great prime ministers has ultimately been crushed by his wayward treatment of what is right and what is wrong for which his colleagues could no longer forgive him.