this is bbc world news, the headlines. japan's longest serving prime minister shinzo abe is assasinated — you will chop twice on the street while giving a speech and airlifted to hospital where doctors tried to save his life. the suspect has been named by police as 41—year—old yamagami tetsuya. it's thought he held a grudge against him. sepp blatter and michel platini have been found not guilty by a swiss court. dos santos has

died in hospital in spain, he was 79. nearly four decades of power, marred by allegations of nepotism and corruption, his family enormously wealthy. at 10pm, jane hill will be here with a full round—up of the day's news. first, newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello. it's adam in the studio. emma here. and it's chris. chris, i'm looking at your phone to see if someone�*s going to phone with, like, a historic message as we're recording this podcast. because ijust, i assume that just what happens to you all the time now. you got to deliver for newscast as well. yeah. no, i'm afraid. exactly. nothing other than are you going to ring before bath—time is finished at home? 0h, mikejust managed to do that once we finished the other side of chris mason's life. so what was it like standing in downing streetjust before

borisjohnson came to the podium? you could see 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, 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 gone from winning a colossal majority less than three years ago to being out on his ear. ifelt 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 and 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? 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, that clip of the prime minister, there weren't exactly vast skipfuls 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 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 story, as we would call it in the trade is the large number of conservative mps 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 stand—in? or can you do something about the rules for electing his successor? 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 boris johnson, 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 emboldened 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. 0h, 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 quite 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 are writing on your new headed treasury note paper, 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 the importance of the fact it was treasury notepaper. so the civil servants were happy for that. so that was a signal from the whole of whitehall i suspect, that entire civil service was sending a message to borisjohnson, because that is political business, so that probably should not have been on treasury paper 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 last night saying borisjohnson should resign but shes wasn't resigning from government, and saying by the way if he goes because this was still at the point where it wasn't certain, i fancy being prime minister myself. so in that sense, every convention, every norm of how government ministers would normally behave,

smashed by circumstances. chris, the other big story developing tonight quickly is who next? totally, that 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, and then it will go out to the membership, unless there is agreement of who it might be. so 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 who 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 borisjohnson 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 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 borisjohnson and 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, then i think what will happen is a conversation about what it means to conservative, in 2022. in an era of huge tax and spending, by any historical comparison, coming out of the pandemic, the huge challenge has the nhs face, the situation round 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, - the chancellor then nearly not you have nadhim zahawi, 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. 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 mayor a remight be... and there is a lot on social media of him trying to do pony tails for his daughter. i fine that relatable.

because they are mighty hard. he has been doing a lot of child hair care this week. that might be part of his strategy. let us talk about this more. bim afolami. do you think which wave do you think you were in. so i get second, first, third. which variant of resign ee where are you? well the way i thought about it was, you know, and i've in private been. speaking to colleagues about this over recent days. _ and if you speak to anybody - who i know, they'll tell you that i was probably arguing in private, look, we need to do something. i things are things are wrong. and then when i felt that that was the right time l seeing the chancellor, - rishi sunak and the health secretary, sajid javid, - that confirmed for me that this was the time to confirm, you know, to deliver on what to action. - the things that i've i

been thinking about, because 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 whatever it is... the deputy chief whip| is the first port of call. and so it was such a problem that he'd been accused of abusing his power over somebody vulnerable. yeah. and i think that that's - i could forgive anybody for not fully recognising the significance of that to mps. _ and i think that that is very important. . to what extent did you have misgivings about borisjohnson�*s judgment and the machine he was running before that? because there were plenty of other opportunities for you to have gone,

oh, i'm not very happy with how things are being handled here. well, sometimes, of course, like with all prime ministers, there are things you like and things you don't like — at the confidence . motion, which i know seems like a long time ago, - it was only about a month ago at that confidence motion - the prime minister asked mej and i know he said to others, he said, look, give me a chance. i i know that the parties thing wentl wrong and i've apologised for that. . give me a chance to rebuild trust l in me, the government and the party and we gave him that chance. but the difficulty is that _ when you then see something coming up so soon after that, | you see the same sort of behaviours that led us down. the difficulty with the response to the allegations of— parties in downing street. and that you've got to act as a party. i and look, it wasn't just myjudgment.| it was the judgment of the vast majority of my colleagues, - hence why we had sort of so many resignations and all the rest of it. | but, you know, it's not an edifying process. i and are you know, i don't blame anybody for for thinking it's - all very undignified and messy. the vast majority of your colleagues, as you say, the herd comment.

tell us what you think about the herd comment. did you feel part of the herd? what struck you about that comment at all? i think that the prime ministeri with that comment is obviously suggesting or implying that some colleagues were only _ saying they wanted him out| because other people were. and if i may have misinterpreted. that, but if i have interpreted 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 two and a half years ago. - it's a big deal. i don't know when the last time, if ever that has happened. - so mps don't just do that - because somebody else said so. one of the difficulties - about being any prime minister is that you do live in this sort of downing street bunker, i and the job of the building - is to protect 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 i through and sometimes

what is obvious to mps or ministers outside downing street isn't - obvious to people inside. i think in this case you're saying that it's a function of the structure of how the country is run rather than borisjohnson being stubborn or deaf to or not 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 do you reflect in the round on boris johnson 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, butarguably 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 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 andl listening to those things and 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 i with a big personality and it'si important to recognise that - all prime ministers, like any head of government in any country, - the moment 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. theyjust 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 to say.

is that what we found in this case and to pick up on your point, chris, about sort of the impact _ of character on governance and campaigning, is that l all of our strengths, the flip side of them are our weaknesses. - and i think in this case, itjustl so happened that the strength, that sort of strong mindedness to get through and bash - through the brexit deal _ when it was too hard for theresa may and it was too difficult for anyone, that unbelievable political power l to do that, 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. - who should be our next prime minister? well, i'm going to. announce my own... no, i'mioking~ — that would be very ambitious. i mean, great, admirable. i'mjoking, gosh. that's like when people say, that's brave, well done. - yeah. no, i am not standing for office. no, i am... i 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, - there are lots of very good people. the way i think at the moment, i 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 - and effectively and govern, - and particularly on the economic crisis that is already with us, - 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, stilljust about young though my younger sister, you know, debates at this point, _ it's somebody who is keen to hear. and think about the next generation of people in this country. 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. i 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. you're going to now get me into. we're just trying to... _ you know better than we do. well, that's sometimes true! look, suella, who i know has been, you know, is a very good lawyer, i 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. no 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 that's not the best outcome. - and look, there's a debate on this. many of my colleagues who will say, bim, you're talking rubbish, - we could just, we used to do it just with mps _ it didn't cost us any, you know... a couple of cigars! _ someone emerged!

there'll be people that disagree. personally, i mean, one of my colleagues said i to me earlier, he said, _ look, bim, the last two leadership 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 - 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 borisjohnson 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. what a cruel question. - is it true? that is quite cruel! i don't think i've been invited. i have no idea if it's true. - if it is true, the prime minister is entirely within his rights- to hold whatever party he wants

to at chequers _ really shouldn't be too difficult about this. - as long as he is prime minister, he has the right to use - chequers 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. - . suspect. — he's not having sausage rolls? well, he may, but he's on a fitness kick. - i've suddenlyjust remembered somethina. ., 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 - in the world on this subject, and i really am and i do a lot of work on it. _ but at the same time, - at the same time, that brilliant success was going on, - because of, you know, errors,

avoidable errors in westminster, the public, large swathes- of the public probably missed - what was happening from that point 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 voted for the whip on that occasion. i so i'm not now disclaiming my own responsibility. - my personal view at the time and it still remains the view was that - clearly there were problems - with the procedure that existed. it was probably unwise for us 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. - 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, ispend 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 borisjohnson. 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 bein- 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. with high pressure moving in across the uk, lots of dry weather this weekend. feeling very warm in the sunshine, turning hot in places on sunday. overnight, there will be some cloud running in towards northern scotland, with a few showers around, an area of cloud through northern ireland, parts of northwest england. it slips south into wales and the west midlands. it will have a few light showers associated with it and temperatures in the mid to low teens as saturday begins. if you are starting cloudy, wales, parts of western england, that slips away southwards by the end of the morning, taking any light showers with it. outbreaks of rain in northern scotland will turn heavier

later in the day where it's still quite breezy. and although there will be quite a bit of cloud running into northern ireland, there may be a bit of hazy brightness at times and temperatures actually, through parts of england and wales that had some heat on friday, will be a tad cooler on saturday before heating up again on sunday. looking like a fine saturday evening away from northern scotland. warmth being felt more widely on sunday. and the hotspots in the south getting into the low 30s on monday and tuesday.

tonight at ten — the labour leader sir keir starmer is cleared by durham police of breaking lockdown rules. he'd promised to resign if he was fined following an event last april. he insisted today that honesty and integrity matter. it shouldn't be controversial to say that those who make the law can't break the law. and with the conservative leadership contest under way, the former chancellor rishi sunak formally announces his candidacy to replace boris johnson. we'll be live in westminster at the end of a turbulent week in british politics. also on the programme...