Boris Johnson must go – and leave Downing Street with whatever dignity he can muster

Editorial: A quiet exit would be preferable with near-immediate effect, with the deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, or some other caretaker allowed to take over until a new leader emerges or is elected

The alternative will be for the PM to resist the bid to remove him (PA)

After the resignations of Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak, two of the more serious and substantial figures in his lightweight cabinet, the prime minister’s government has entered the terminal stage.

The choice for Boris Johnson is now plain. He can either now announce the end of his premiership, and leave with whatever dignity he can muster – or he can cling on by using every trick in the book, up to and including a threat to dissolve parliament and fight a general election before he’s ousted. He does enjoy drama, after all, does Mr Johnson.

A quiet exit would be preferable with near-immediate effect, with the deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, or some other caretaker allowed to take over until a new leader emerges or is elected.

The alternative will be for Mr Johnson to resist the bid to remove him. He has in the past threatened to fight to the end and told his critics they’d need an armoured division to evict him from No 10. He would in that case continue along the lines he has throughout his leadership, and pretend that everything’s fine.

That has been an intermittently successful tactic thus far, but it is highly unlikely to work now. He would only be shredding whatever residual affection he enjoys, adding to the instability facing the country and his party, and making a fool of himself. If he tried to pull a fast one and call an election the forces of common sense should be able to restrain him.

Shortly, the backbench 1922 Committee will hold its elections, and will almost certainly produce an anti-Boris majority. There will in that case soon be another vote of confidence in his leadership under a revised rule book, and if ministers wish to vote no confidence they will have to resign to do so. It could be a swift coup de grace, and a highly undignified one, if he cares about such things. It would make for good copy in his memoirs, and keep the lobby journalists excited, but it would be a sorry end to his short time in office.

Even if he won another vote of confidence, aided by the “payroll” vote and patronage, he would still face being sanctioned by the House of Commons for knowingly misleading parliament, again opening up the bizarre possibility of a by-election in Uxbridge to determine the future leadership of the UK.

Such obduracy would be unbecoming, even for him. He is not so great a campaigner or so magnetic a personality as to be able to hang on now when his party have given up on him. Politics is an ungrateful business, and whatever he achieved for the Eurosceptics and the Tories in 2016 and 2019, they are looking to the future.

Their relationship with Mr Johnson was always transactional, mercenary even. Now he is a proven vote loser, his past achievements are of purely historical importance. Indeed it is odd that a party supposedly so ruthless should have indulged the lawbreaking, iconoclastic, morally deficient and, above all, dishonest Mr Johnson for as long as they did.

He would certainly suffer by comparison with Theresa May, equally unwilling to quit, and David Cameron – let alone Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, balletic departures by comparison. Mr Johnson would, rightly be regarded as a spoilt, entitled cry-baby.

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So the best thing now, given the inevitable course of events, is for Mr Johnson to quit, ask the cabinet to appoint a caretaker or deputy, vacate Downing Street, and allow the party to rebuild and renew itself. By convention he and his family could stay at Chequers until he finds a new home.

For the country, the old challenges won’t go away just because there’s a new incumbent in No 10. Brexit will not suddenly yield its elusive benefits. The divisions over Europe, on tax, on social policy and culture wars all pre-dated Mr Johnson, at least in part, and will continue after he’s gone. The one thing that should almost certainly change though is the culture in Downing Street.

A clear out of the old guard, the restoration of integrity and trust, and a more serious and dedicated style of government, with a more open approach to the media and public, is an essential but not sufficient condition for a programme of party and national renewal.

We do not need any more lies, and more parties, and any more culture wars. At long last, someone will be “getting on the with job”, and this time they’ll mean it.