The inside story of Boris Johnson's longest day: How the Prime Minister survived a major scare
A couple of minutes after 8am, Sir Graham broke cover to tell the world that 'the threshold has been reached', triggering a formal vote of confidence later that evening. A few minutes later, a one-page summary of the case for the PM's defence dropped into Tory MPs' inboxes. At 9am, government whips were summoned to a meeting to war-game the day and identify the waverers who might respond positively to a call from Mr Johnson.
No 10's confidence had previously been buoyed by the fact that there was no obvious challenger. As one old hand put it: 'You can't have a challenge without a challenger.' That changed shortly before 11am when Jeremy Hunt took to social media to savage the PM. The former foreign secretary, who was defeated by Mr Johnson in the 2019 leadership contest, has been 'on manoeuvres' at Westminster for months.
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said: 'Your pandemic preparation during six years as health secretary was found wanting and inadequate. Your duplicity right now in destabilising the party and country to serve your own personal ambition, more so.' Her no-nonsense response underlined how difficult it could be to put the Tory Party together again after last night's vote.
The business of government also had to continue. The PM pressed ahead with a planned phone call with Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky. He then hosted a meeting about Ukraine with Estonian PM Kaja Kallas.
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