this is bbc news. we will have the headlines and all the main stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. hello, it is adam in the studio. it hello, it is adam in the studi0-_ hello, it is adam in the studio. , ., ., , studio. it is emma vardy. chris, i— studio. it is emma vardy. chris. i am _ studio. it is emma vardy. chris, i am looking - studio. it is emma vardy. chris, i am looking at - studio. it is emma vardy. | chris, i am looking at your phone _ chris, i am looking at your phone to _ chris, i am looking at your phone to see if anyone might deliver— phone to see if anyone might deliver an important broadcast. nothing — deliver an important broadcast. nothing but are you going to rin- nothing but are you going to ring before _ nothing but are you going to ring before bath _ nothing but are you going to ring before bath time - nothing but are you going to ring before bath time is - ring before bath time is finished _ ring before bath time is finished at _ ring before bath time is

finished at home? - ring before bath time is finished at home?- ring before bath time is finished at home? the other side of chris _ finished at home? the other side of chris mason's - finished at home? the other side of chris mason's life. i so what was it like standing in downing streetjust before borisjohnson came to the podium? you could see, like all the staffers and you could see his few remaining supportive mps. they were all sort of hugging each other, looking. what was it like? yeah, and his wife and their daughter in a little sling thing. you just get a sense in those moments of the kind of human and then the political and then the constitutional, because they're all wrapped up in the same thing. and, you know, borisjohnson coming out to the podium, and, you know, a man who's crushed — a man who's gone from winning a colossal majority less than three years ago to being out on his ear. and felt a little bit defensive about it, as we'll hear now. in the last few days, i've tried to persuade my colleagues that it would be eccentric to change governments when we're delivering so much,

and when we have such a vast mandate, and when we're actually only a handful of points behind in the polls, even in midterm, after quite a few months of pretty relentless sledging and when the economic scene is so difficult domestically and internationally. and i regret not to have been successful in those arguments, and of course, it's painful not to be able to see through so many ideas and projects myself. but as we've seen at westminster, the herd instinct is powerful. when the herd moves, it moves. there's loads of screaming, isn't there, down at the end of the gates, which kind of protect downing street. and that seems to have got louder and louder in recent years, isn't it? is it getting hard to concentrate when you're there? yeah, you're kind of — there you are sort of looking at huw edwards, that kind of face and voice of news, and the benny hill music playing in the background. but it's interesting, you know, listening again to that clip of the prime minister, there weren't exactly vast calls of mea culpa. no, there was defiance. there was constant references,

as he describes it, to his mandate, that election win of a few years back. and there wasn't a big "oh, gosh, i did get lots wrong and i kind of get it." i mean, he gets the political reality that he's getting turfed out — got it eventually. but there wasn't any reflections on what his critics see as the colossal mistakes he's made that has transformed his premiership from being this moment of this guy who could walk on water at westminster, having crushed labour to their biggest defeat since 1935, to getting thrown out two and a bit years later. were you surprised, though? because in a way you could say, well, then he's been pretty consistent in thatjust resolute self—belief, perhaps bunker mentality of actually reading the room and what else is going on in the country and how people are actually feeling. well, i was going to say it was one last reminder, although maybe it wasn't the last. there'll be a few more still to go over the next few months before he actually finally moves out of downing street. that borisjohnson doesn't play by the rules. i mean, it's such a cliche to even say it.

it's like, that was not a textbook i'm resigning. i'm quitting saying i'm sorry for all these mistakes kind of speech. so even at the very end, he's like, i'm going to do this my way. to use another cliche. yeah, you know, why would you expect a textbook prime ministerial performance in that kind of departure moment? not quite departure moment. there'll be another one of those, but that kind of, "i will be going" moment, when that isn't his character. this is this convention—smashing, rule—bending prime minister, a prime minister who the electorate knew more about on him assuming office than any other prime minister of our lifetimes, and so i guess knew his strengths and his weaknesses, but whose party in the end, i think, concluded that he'd done what they'd hired him for — winning an election and legally delivering brexit, getting brexit done, as he would argue. although it's, you know, more than most, there's still huge questions around it, not least in in northern ireland. and i think his party concluding, look, he'd done the big ticket stuff that he was put there to do — turf him out and get someone else. and this was the day two story,

as we would call it in the trade, is the large number of conservative mp who don't seem happy with him even being there in a caretaker capacity for a couple of months. they're looking at various ways of can you get rid of him and replace him with someone else to be the standing? or can you do something about the rules for electing his successor that means that process is much quicker than the rules say it should take? yeah, and there's a big argument about that today. i think in the end, where that's likely to conclude is that conservative mps do have the power to get rid of a conservative leader. they've proved that in the end. constitutionally, they don't actually have the power to get rid of a prime minister unless they are willing to back the opposition parties in a vote of confidence in the government in the house of commons, which is something labour have said that they are willing to do. but if you do that and you turf the prime minister out, you bring down the government and you cause a general election. would a conservative mp, even one who really doesn't like borisjohnson, want to do that given where they are in the polls and the fact that they would be plunged into that election

without even having a leader? and really embolden the opposition and face calls of traitor and all sorts of things that would hang around your neck. exactly. so i kind of think in the end, probably even those who really don't like him could put a peg on the nose and think, well, let's put up with him for a few weeks or maximum a couple of months until they choose on our behalf who our next prime minister is. we had a weird cabinet meeting today of the new cabinet because the prime minister had a reshuffle. so there was some old people kind of brought back, some people who had resigned who weren't brought back. michael gove was fired in quite dramatic fashion. on what night was it? wednesday night? definitely not back. nadhim zahawi was there. imagine this in your own life. 35 hours on from being appointed by the boss, you're writing on your

new headed treasury notepaper saying you don't have confidence in that boss. both the chancellor and the education secretary did that this morning. what i hadn't clocked until this afternoon was the importance of the fact it was treasury notepaper. so that means the senior civil servants were happy for that. so that was a signal from the whole of whitehall i suspect, that the entire civil service was sending a message to borisjohnson, because that is political business. so that probably should not have been on treasury notepaper. and i know that is a mega—nerd point, but that is my feeling. we were just in extraordinary territory, you know, we had the attorney general appear on the today programme under her own steam, as attorney general having been on the television saying borisjohnson should resign but shes wasn't resigning from government and saying oh, by the way, if he goes — because this was still

at the point where it wasn't certain — i quite fancy being prime minister myself. so in that sense, every convention, every norm of how government ministers would normally behave, smashed by circumstances. and chris, the other big story developing tonight very quickly is: who next? totally, that's the big question — who will be our next— prime minister, chosen by the thinnest sliver of the electorate — the 100,000ish members of the conservative party. if the contest lasts as far as them having a choice, there will be a whittling down of all of the wannabes to to and then it will go out to the membership, unless there is a cooked uper agreement of who it might be just here. so, yes, that race is under way. liz truss had a dilemma — does she set off to the other side of the world to a g20 meeting? she did. pretty much as soon as she got there, she set off back. i was talking to a cabinet minister. their phone was ringing — who was it? liz truss.

i wonder why she is ringing, said this person. do you think there will be chat about integrity, being able to believe in the next person, trying to be everything that boris johnson fell down on in the end, because those things have been so prominent and annoyed people at a deep level for some when it came to things like partygate or believing if what he said or covering up the truth, those kind of criticisms. do you think the character of this leadership election will have a lot do with the things that boris johnson got wrong. yes, i think they will all try to define themselves in character terms as being different from boris johnson and kind of bake in that idea that integrity and the criticisms that were made of borisjohnson are kind of nailed on as assumed to be better under the next leader. and then i think what will happen is a conversation about what it means to conservative in 2022. in an era of huge tax and huge spending, by any historical comparison, coming out of the pandemic, the huge challenges the nhs faces, the situation around the national finances,

and there will be a conversation about — yeah. — what is it to be a tory prime minister in 2022, after the brexit era? and that is a massive question. and there are so many names floating round at this stage. if all the names make it into the contest it will be like a list of 20 people. you have nadhim zahawi, who is the, chancellor then nearly not the chancellor, then people likejeremy hunt who lost to borisjohnson last time round. grant shapps. the transport secretary and there are reports his friends and colleagues are hitting the phones hard as we record this tonight, then somebody like tom tugendhat. penny mordaunt. i was going to say, tom tugendhat is a former soldier, he has never run anything but maybe having never run anything or served under the borisjohnson era or the may era might be... and there is a lot on social media of him trying to do pony

tails and plaits for his daughter. and i find that relatable, because they're mighty hard. he has been doing a lot of child hair care this week, so that might be part of his leadership strategy. let us talk about this more. we can talk about it with bim afolami, the conservative mp who resigned quite early on as vice chair of the party. hello. which wave do you think you were in — second, first, third? which variant of resigner were you? the way i thought about it was, and in private in speaking - to colleagues about this - in recent days, and you speak to anybody i know, they will. tell you i was probably arguing in private that we need to dol something, things are wrong. and then when i felt that that was the right time, i seeing — the chancellor, rishi sunak, and the health secretary, |

sajid javid, that confirmed for me that this was| the time to deliver — or to action the things i that i had been thinking about. because ijust think- that when you're dealing with matters of integrity- and trust with one's colleagues on an issue of real importance — because what i don't think. a lot of listeners may fully- appreciate is the deputy chief whip isn't just a sort. of mid—level position. they are the pastoral leader of the parliamentary party. i if anybody has a problem of any description — - it could even be sexual in nature, or whateverl it is — the deputy chief whip is the first port of call. - hence why it was such a problem that he had been accused of abusing his power over somebody vulnerable. yes, and i can forgive anybody for not fully recognising - the significance of that l to mps, and i think that that is very important. but to what extent did you have misgivings about boris johnson's government and what he was doing before that?

because there were opportunities to say you were not happy with how things were being handled the with all prime ministers, there are things you like and don't like. at the confidence motion, - it seemed like a long time ago, only about a month ago, - the prime minister asked me, and he said to others, i give me a chance, i know the party thing went - wrong and i've apologise, give me a chance to rebuild - trust in me and the government and the party, and wej gave him that chance. but the difficulty is that - when you then see something coming up so soon after that| where you see the same sort of behaviours that led us down the difficulty| with the response to - the allegations are parties in downing street, i thinki you have to act as a party. it wasn'tjust myjudgment, . it was the judgment of the vast majority of my colleagues, | hence why we had so many resignations and all the rest of it. - but it's not- an edifying process. i don't blame anybody for thinking it is very i undignified and messy.

the vast majority of your colleagues, as you say. the herd comment — tell us what you think about that. did you feel part of the herd? what struck you about that comment? i think that the prime - minister, with that comment, is obviously suggesting or implying that somel colleagues were only - saying they wanted him out because other people were. and i may have misinterpreted that, but if i have interpreted i that correctly, i think that's incorrect. - you know, it's a very big thing to change your leader- after having won a big - majority only 2.5 years ago. it's a big deal. i don't know when the last time, if ever, that has - happened. mps don't just do that - because somebody else said so. one of the difficulties _ of anybody being prime minister is we live in this downing| street bunker and the job of the building is to protect l the prime minister and that's right because it's a tough - world out there, but sometimes that means that information doesn't fully permeate - through and sometimes what is obvious to mpsi

or ministers outside - downing street isn't obvious to people inside. are you saying that is a function of the structure of how the country is run rather than borisjohnson being stubborn or deaf or not aware of reality? more than one thing can be the case at the same time. | right, so there's a bit of that too. i wonder how you reflect in the round on borisjohnson at this moment. because the thing i'm struck by, i'm fascinated by character, and how important character is, that in many senses, the essence of his character is what makes him a great campaigner, but arguably as well, made him not well suited to governing. one of my colleagues who knows the prime minister better- than i do described him as, and this is a colleague - who is not prone to - histrionics, and he said he's the most charismatic person he's ever been around - in his entire life.

and the impact of such - a personality on people around them can be quite transformative. . and i think that sometimes it i means that people around them do not tell them home truths. and i do think that one of the features of this i downing street was that ijust don't think that the right - information was being conveyed at the right times always - to the prime minister and him respecting and listening - to those things and i then acting on them. that's so interesting. the idea that the scale of character contributes to a, or exacerbates a weakness because there's an unwillingness to speak truth to power. i think that when you're - dealing with a big personality and it's important to recognise that all prime ministers, - like any head of government in any country, the momentl somebody acquires that - position, there is some sort of aura that follows them i around when they have it, and it's difficult for- people to say no to them. and that is the case - with all prime ministers. they just lose touch then? you're inside downing street, you just lose a grip on what people are thinking and feeling, not reading the room. i do think there is an element to that of every leadership. . you saw with margaret thatcher after her time in office. -

you saw it with tony blair at| the end of his time in office. and i know they were longer premierships.| i suppose what i'm trying i to say is that what we found in this case and to pick up on on your point, i chris, about sort of the impact of character on governance i and campaigning, is that all of our strengths, i the flip side of themj are our weaknesses. and i think in this case, itjust so happened i that the strength, that sorti of strong mindedness to get through and bash through i the brexit deal when it was too hard for theresa mayl and it was too difficult for anyone, that unbelievable political power to do that, i win that majority, bash - jeremy corbyn and all the rest of it, that then on the _ flipside then became a weakness in certain respects. and i think that that's what we've seen. i who should be our next prime minister? well, i'm going to. announce my own... no, i'mjoking. that would be very ambitious. i mean, great, admirable. i'm joking, gosh. that's like when people say, that's brave, well done. i yeah. no, i am not - standing for office. no, lam... i have no idea.

not a single idea has ever floated across your mind about who should be the prime minister? well, no, but of course, there are lots, look, i there are lots - of very good people. the way i think at the moment, at time of recording this - with you, is what i'm thinking about is we need somebody. who can appeal to a wide section of voters. - i think, i fear that our appeal has been more narrow over. the last couple of years than it should be. - you need somebody who can really do the job properly i and effectively and govern, and particularly on the economic. crisis that is already with us, i but may, and the energy crisis that may get worse. you also need somebody who can unite the party to as large - a degree as possible, - though that is always difficult after a leadership contest. and the fourth thing i'd say for me personally, i maybe it's because i'm, you know, 36, stilljustl about young though my younger sister, you know, debates- this point, it's somebody- who is keen to hear and think about the next generation of people in this country. i all of those things - i think the new leader has to try and do. i'm trying to work out who you might be talking about.

well, let's talk about some of the contenders, do you think, rishi sunak has got that stuff? i mean, rishi is a really- talented guy and he's a friend and, you know, he's definitely| one of the leading contenders. that's obvious. 0k. some, i mean, the only people that have actually put their hats in the ring officially are people like suella braverman, the attorney general. do you think she's got it? ithink, look, i'm not going to play all this game now. i you're going to now| get me into trouble. we're just trying to... you know better than we do. well, that's sometimes true! look, suella, who i know has l been, you know, is a very good lawyer, as attorney general at a young age and is very. capable. i think really what you've got to do is wait for everybody. next week to to come out. and i think the party quite | quickly will come to a view as to who's best. do you? what do you mean by quite quickly? does it need to go to the membership when you're picking a prime minister and there's a certain urgency? could this all be wrapped up in a few weeks amongst mps westminster? it could be, but i suspect i that's not the best outcome. and look, there's a debate on this. | many of my colleagues i who will say, bim, you're

|talking rubbish, we could just, | we used to do itjust with mps. it didn't cost us. any, you know... a couple of cigars! someone emerged! there'll be people that disagree. i personally, i mean, one i of my colleagues said to me earlier, he said, look, bim, the last two leadership i contests we've had have really been brexit leadership - contests, which was important at the time but it wasn't - a debate about what - conservatism is, what modern conservatism should be about, where we go from here. - the last time we did i that was david cameron's leadership in 2005, you know, almost 17 years ago. _ that contest went on forever as well. we need a proper| debate as a party. bim, just on that subject of how long it will take to get a new leader and if boris johnson stays as caretaker leader in that time, bit of a gossipy question for you. there is a rumour going around, isn't there, that one of the reasons he wants to stay on is because he's going to throw a big wedding party at chequers over the summer. have you heard anything about that? have you been invited? i don't think i have been invited. i what a cruel question. is it true? that is quite cruel! i don't think i've been invited. i i have no idea if it's true.

if it is true, the prime minister is entirely. within his rights to holdi whatever party he wants to at chequers. really shouldn't be too difficult about this. i as long as he is prime i minister, he has the right to use chequers i for whatever he... yeah, but what if his calculations about whether to stay on as prime minister, even in a caretaker role, are being decided by the massive sausage roll delivery he's got booked for like the 29th ofjuly. i think that's - probably a bit much. i suspect that isn't the case. i suspect.. he's not having sausage rolls? well, he may, but he's on a fitness kick. - i've suddenlyjust remembered something. oh, no. cop 26. yes. it was the third day of cop 26 and i remember on the tuesday night, so it all gone swimmingly, loads of leaders there, loads of presidents, prime ministers. borisjohnson was loving it. cop was going really well. he'd just won a sort of ding—dong with macron over brexit. number 10 were riding really high and somebody i know saw them quaffing lots of champagne into the night in their hotel in glasgow. then i, that night,

as i was going to bed, got a call saying, oh, tomorrow morning on the today programme you're going to talk about this owen patterson thing. i was like, what owen patterson thing? and that was the first kind of brewing of the fact that the government was going to try and change the rules about how mps were disciplined for breaking the rules. and that actually is probably when the real rot really crept in. and i remember thinking that wednesday morning, have they gone from like quaffing champagne in the hotel on tuesday night to actually, this is the start of the downfall now. and i remember you were there as the minister on duty doing the media that day, and i don't think we chatted about it or maybe we did, but i'm just suddenly remembering, you were there for day one of the start of the downfall. thank you for reminding me of that time. - yeah, because they were riding so high. well, like, so, what i will say about that was this. - it is a really good example of a contrast of this - government and premiership. i am a strong, strong supporter of what we've done on cop 26.| i'm a strong, strong supporter of our environmental policies. |

i'm proud that we've led i in the world on this subject, and i really am and i do a lot of work on it. i but at the same time, | at the same time, that brilliant success was going on, because of, you know, - errors, avoidable errors i in westminster, the public, large swathes of the public probably missed what was| happening from that point i of cop26 and all they heard about were tory mps doing, you know, silly things - around their friend who had| been know, had been found to have done things— illegitimately around lobbying. now, look, i played my own part in that, i'm not, you know, i i voted for the whip on that occasion. i so i'm not now disclaiming my own responsibility. i my personal view at the time and it still remains the view. was that clearly there were i problems with the procedure that existed. it was probably unwise for usl to try and do that at the same time as an excellent complaint. that was our mistake. but i think it's a very. good example of how, you know, this premiership, this government's had real. successes, but also been undone

by some of the flaws as well. i bim, thank you for your time at the end of a very busy week. thank you. you know what? the thing that kind of rattles around in my head on a day like this, where there's huge noise at westminster and someone doing myjob is sort of making a lot of that noise, is obviously it's massive because it's about who our next prime minister is but how does it sound and feel for people all over the uk. emma, most of the time you're in northern ireland and ijust wonder how people would be sort of digesting all of this, when there's this noise about selecting our next prime minister, but which doesn't involve most people. well, look, i spend most of my life outside of the westminster bubble, she says, speaking from the heart of westminster. you definitely, you always feel that the further away you travel from westminster, the less wrapped up people feel with all the frenzy that we're engulfed in here. of course, particularly in northern ireland, there's always that slight apathy towards a british prime minister because many nationalists will say, well, they'll never have anything in our interest anyway. and then unionists always feel a bit insecure about whether, you know, the british prime minister even cares about them at all. and i did have a little dip around the radio, local radio phone—ins in different areas, had a few

chats with local reporters. the set of people who were getting sick of partygate while everyone here was obsessed with it are also a bit apathetic towards the idea of this another big westminster drama, collapse of a prime minister. of course, though, it's always a big moment for the country when a prime minister goes and borisjohnson was one of those prime ministers that always provoked a strong reaction, good or bad, in people. people who'd never met him from miles away would feel like they knew his character. either he was a posh tory toff scoundrel, you couldn't trust him, or they saw him as really authentic, he speaks what people are feeling, he says it how it is. you know, people have those strong reactions to boris johnson. that's why it's not difficult to get an opinion out of people. but as for the big frenzy of westminster, yeah, i'm afraid, guys, not everyone's as obsessed with it as the people who sit in this building. wow, the state of the nation summed up brilliantly by emma vardy.

come back again. i have to travel from a long way outside the westminster bubble and make it here to see you guys. well, thanks for coming, though. and chris, thanks for all your amazing work over the last couple of days. ta. history being written in real time. and thanks to you, too, for listening and watching to this latest of many episodes this week of newscast. bye. see you again. hello there. despite cloud dominating the weather story this week, we've been promising you sunshine. well, we gradually got there in the end on thursday. after a cloudy start, we had beautiful blue sky and sunshine by the middle of the afternoon. not quite the case, unfortunately, in the far northwest, in highland scotland. still some pretty grey cloud around. and in actual fact, this weather front�*s

still going to sit there throughout the day on friday. high pressure is building in and it will gradually drift its way a little bit further eastwards and dominate the scene over the weekend, but it does mean some drizzly rain first thing in the morning to the northwest of scotland and the far north of northern ireland. as we go through the day, there will be plenty of settled, sunny weather. with light winds, temperatures are going to respond quite quickly, so highs of 21 degrees in eastern scotland, 2a perhaps into the midlands, 28 celsius the high — that's 82 fahrenheit — somewhere in the southeast. we now have to start thinking about uv, which will be high or very high. and we haven't seen that for some time, so that's certainly worth bearing in mind if you're going to be spending any time outside. now, as i say, that high pressurejust shifts its position a little into the weekend. and areas where we've seen some low, grey cloud stubbornly sitting in the far north and west, still there on saturday but slowly

improving as the weekend progresses. perhaps the cloud just retreating to the extreme north. more sunshine coming through. again, light winds for all of us, and again those temperatures responding, likely once again into the high 20s for many. so that means a warm night to come through saturday night into sunday morning. it means a repeat performance on sunday — again, dry, settled and sunny. and once again, those temperatures responding. so we might see that cloud breaking up a little more into the far northwest of scotland. here, temperatures 16—20 the high, but highest values likely of 29 or 30 celsius somewhere in the southeast on sunday. now, it looks likely that that high pressure is going to continue to stay with us for the next few days. again, still, those weak weather fronts a bit of a nuisance for a time, but then it builds in and settles things down quite nicely. so as we go through the week ahead, some cloud from time to time in the far north. dry, settled, sunny and still pretty warm for all of us. some people will see

temperatures into the low 30s.

welcome to bbc news. i'm rich preston. our top stories — borisjohnson resigns as conservative party leader, but will stay on as caretaker prime minister. he blames his colleagues for what he called an "eccentric" idea to change leadership. as we've seen at westminster, the herd instinct is powerful, and when the herd moves, it moves, and, my friends, in politics, no—one is remotely indispensable. we'll take a look at who might replace borisjohnson, as the list of potential

candidates grows by the hour. and i'm mark lobel, in downing street, where