For a journalist given to hyperbole himself, Boris knows how to deliver a genuine political massacre

Jaws were dropping across Westminster as the new PM effectively eviscerated Theresa May’s cabinet, sacking or forcing out more than half of her top team

Political reporters are sometimes accused of reaching too easily for the violent vocabulary of massacres and bloodbaths to spice up otherwise dry accounts of men (and they are mostly men) being shuffled around from one desk job to another.

But Boris Johnson’s knife-wielding in his first hours of power was one of those political spectacles that truly lived up to the hype.

Jaws were dropping across Westminster as the new PM effectively eviscerated Theresa May’s cabinet, sacking or forcing out more than half of her top team as he constructed a tight-knit band of loyalists seemingly focused on the single goal of getting Brexit over the line in October.