in the morning across western areas in the morning but brightening up in northern ireland, further heavy rain in the east of scotland and wales in western england will have showery rain pushing into parts of the midland, much of the eastern side of england will have another fine day and it will feel warm where you get to see some sunny spells. that is your latest forecast. hello, this is bbc news. i'm luxmy gopal and these are the headlines. mourners pay their respects to the last soviet leader, mikhail gorbachev, who is now being buried in moscow. moscow blames maintenance problems for failing to resume the main pipeline that transports gas from russia to europe after a three—day closure. the government announces a £2 cap on bus fares across england, in the hope it will help people cope with the rising cost of living. ready for lift—off...again.

nasa prepares to make a second attempt later to launch its most powerful rocket to the moon, five days after technical problems scuppered the first. and, serena williams is defeated in the third round of the us open in new york, in what is likely to be her last competative match. now on bbc news, borisjohnson: departing downing street, looking back at borisjohnson�*s time in number 10, from brexit to the coronavirus pandemic, partygate and the russian invasion of ukraine. a warning that this programme contains flashing images. six weeks ago, a typhoon fighterjet took off from an raf base in lincolnshire. its co—pilot just announced he was about to become britain's ex—prime minister. after three happy years

in the cockpit, and after performing some pretty difficult — if not astonishing — feats, i am now going to hand over the controls, seamlessly, to someone else. i don't know who. boris johnson believes in the great man theory of history, and he thinks he is that great man, like his hero, winston churchill. churchill, the guy made the most incredible series of mistakes, his early career was studied with disasters of one kind or another, but he always came back from them, and he always struck by what he believed. applause. whenjohnson became prime minister three years ago, churchill's grandson, sir nicholas soames, his friend and fellow etonian, told me of the text he had sent. i said to him, when churchill became prime minister,

on the day he became prime minister he went back to his flat where he met my grandmother and his children, and they drank a bottle of champagne. and he proposed a toast, which i quoted to boris, of, "here's to not beggar—in it up." and that is my hope for boris. and yourfear? my fear is that he could hugger it up. throughout his life, boris johnson's favourite mode of transport has been by the seat his pants, his rollercoaster premiership has been dominated by questions about his character, his integrity, and the biggest puzzle of all — who is the real borisjohnson? get me a ladder! he is the people person that people want to see as their prime minister, they want someone can relate to, and they can relate to someone who gets stuck on a zipwire or someone who, you know, has his shirt hanging out because that's what they do every day of their lives. this is borisjohnson aged five, paddling his own canoe,

he grew up the oldest of four children in the hugely competitive johnson family. he knows that life is a competition and he always wants to be top. whenever anyone asked him what he wanted to be he would answer, �*world king'. and that is true. 0h! ah! oh, yes, oh, yes. he painted this self—portrait at the age of 12 and downgraded his ambition to becoming british prime minister. at the age of 13, johnson was off to eton college, the elite private school that's produced 20 british prime ministers. choir sings. at eton he became a star of the school plays. and he discovered he could make people laugh.

do you think that you learned something for later life from acting in plays at eton that you could actually get more laughs by looking as if you don't know your lines than actually remembering them? well, i certainly think that as a general tactic and life, if that is what you are driving at, it is often useful to give the slight impression that you are deliberately pretending to not know what is going on. because the reality may be that you don't know what is going on, but people won't be able to tell the difference. this is why he is diminutive for other politicians. because they're all, to an extent, playing the part assigned to them by the party. you know, you have to be loyal, you have to be a good tory. boris has realised quite early on that he would go further if he broke all those rules, and people would love him even more. johnson was elected a member of eton�*s elite group which could wear its own fancy waistcoats, and he was made

captain of the school. it was at eton that the would—be world king would learn to play by his own rules. martin hammond, his house master who also taught him, was one of the people teaching himlatin and greek, wrote in his report, "i think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation, which binds everyone else." ...but that's 18 months away. johnson's career, like churchill's, began as a controversialjournalist and he rose to become a tv celebrity. audience applause. bonjour, ce moi, borisjohnson, le maire de londres. speaks russian kung hei fat choy. by the time he was on the cusp of becoming prime minister, he was already a singular phenomenon because no figure probably ever in british politics, but certainly in modern times,

had managed to combine so successfully politics with the entertainment industry. and he had a musical comedian sense of performance. he was the most striking performance politician of modern times. and it was almost as if he was knocking on the gates of number 10 downing st shouting, "i'm a celebrity, get me in there." would you like to be prime minister? i think it's a very tough job, being prime minister, very toughjob. i mean, obviously if that ball came loose from the back of a scrum, which it won't, i might — of course it would be — it would be a great, great thing to have a crack at but it's not going to happen. the human bulldozer, who snatched the ball from the back of the tory scrum, is a man of many contradictions. a classical scholar turn popular entertainer, a self—proclaimed liberal one nation tory, hand in glove with the hardline brexiteers.

the doubters, the doomsters, the gloomsters, they are going to get it wrong again. because we are going to restore trust in our democracy. johnson would become prime minister, promising to end the deadlock of brexit. he brought with him as his chief adviser dominic cummings, a mastermind of the leave campaign who believed in creative destruction. cummings and johnson worked out that the only way to do brexit was to behave in a pretty outrageous fashion. and then to get an election which would be the people versus parliament. they really liked driving the remainers so mad with rage that the remainers in so many cases stopped thinking straight. with the slogan, "get brexit done," johnson enhanced his reputation

as a winner. chuckles. he won the general election by a landslide, tearing down normally rocksolid labour seats in the so—called red wall of the north. the prime minister celebrated the chinese new year injanuary, 2020, the year of the rat began with a far more deadly challenge than brexit, arriving in the form of covid—i9. reporter: prime minister, are you concerned about. the coronavirus coming to the united kingdom? in february, the prime minister regarded this asjust a scare story — "don't worry about it, i am going to get chris whitty to inject me live on tv with coronavirus so everyone will realise it's nothing to be frightened of. i was in a hospital the other night where i think there were a few. coronavirus patients, _ and i shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, l and i continue to shake hands. but suddenly things became deadly

serious, asjohnson took the country into lockdown as the pandemic spread. ok, i'll stop and then i'll get further instructions, 0k. and with his unerring knack of becoming the centre of the story, the prime minister himself tested positive for the virus, and went into self isolation. he didn't really believe in people falling ill? he didn't even have a gp. he didn't have a doctor. i said to him, i had a conversation about, like, "who is your gp? we need to get a doctor, now." he didn't have one, he had no idea who his gp was. his advisers claimed he was doing well, but when he held a zoom meeting with his cabinet, things seemed rather different. i remember being on a zoom call, a cabinet zoom call. i remember saying, "the pm is clearly dreadfully unwell. "he looks and sounds awful and we need to bring this meeting to a halt. "this is like watching a car crash and we shouldn't be doing it.

"he needs to be in bed, he needs to be having proper treatment." the prime minister was secretly driven to saint thomas's hospital half a mile from number 10, and the next day he was moved to intensive care. suddenly we were facing a situation where the pm, you know, arguably could be dead by the morning. people like that are meant to be invincible. prime ministers don't get ill, they don't die. did you think the prime minister might die? idid, yeah. what did you feel then? frightened, i think. yeah, frightened. frightened for carrie, for his family, frightened for the country, the government, the party. it was alljust... from someone who'd got to where he had got to suddenly be in intensive care with a once in a ioo—year event that struck the country at that time, it was all very difficult

to take in. borisjohnson said later it would be wrong to say that i thought, "oh, my goodness, this is it. "some terrible buoyancy within the convincing me that everything would almost certainly be all right in the end." i have today left hospital after a week in which the nhs has saved my life, no question. after a fortnight�*s convalescence at chequers, johnson returned to work. if this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected and invisible mugger, which i can tell you from personal experience it is, then this is the moment when we have begun, together, to wrestle it to the floor. in december, 2021, he launched the tories' war on crime,

but media reports were emerging that johnson and his staff had been breaking lockdown rules by holding parties inside number 10. look, i can tell you the guidelines were followed at all times. did you investigate that yourself? are you satisfied, yourself, with that? i have satisfied myself that the guidelines were followed at all times. uh...ah... that evening, a remarkable video emerged. it showed johnson's press secretary, alegra stratton, in the briefing room at number ten, rehearsing with other aides how to deny reports of a wine and cheese party inside number 10. chuckles. is this recording? this fictional party was a business meeting. chuckles. and it was not socially distanced. i was also furious to see that clip. jeering. and, mr speaker, i apologise... i apologise unreservedly. and, mr speaker, it goes without saying, if those rules were broken,

then there will be disciplinary action for all those involved. there were outraged calls forjohnson to resign. instead, allega stratton took the bullet. this afternoon, i am offering my resignation to the prime minister. thanks for your time. i thought she was very, very hard done by, not least because the prime minister turned on her. greater love hath no prime minister than to lay down the life of his friends for his own survival. bell tolls. as the new year 2022 broke, any hopejohnson had that partygate would go away was quickly dashed. itv news came up with a leaked killer e—mail. it had been sent byjohnson�*s senior civil service adviser, martin reynolds, on the 20th of may, 2020, when lockdown regulations were at their toughest.

addressed to 100 downing st staff and marked �*official, sensitive', the e—mail said... it wasn't the language of the humphrey would have used. did you lie about the parties, prime minister? the next day, the prime minister, after weeks of denials that there had been any lockdown parties in number 10, now admitted that he had attended the reynolds event to thank his staff. i believed implicitly that this was a work event... but, mr speaker, with hindsight, i should have sent everyone back inside, i should have found some other way to thank them.

it started with reports of boozy parties in downing street during lockdown. the prime minister pretended that he had been assured there were no parties. now, it turns out he was at the parties all along. can't the prime minister see why the british public think he's lying through his teeth? things were going from bad to worse with the prime minister. it was then reported that in april 2021, on the eve of the funeral of the duke of edinburgh, there'd been two parties in number 10 that had lasted into the small hours. was having to apologise to the queen about those parties the night before she put her husband of over 70 years, she laid him to rest, was that a moment of shame for you? i deeply and bitterly regret that that happened,

and i can only renew my apologies both to her majesty and to the country for misjudgments that were made, and for which i take full responsibility. air raid siren wails. but just when it seemed the pm's days were numbered, he was given a reprieve by an unlikely figure. explosion. vladimir putin invaded ukraine. the prime minister sought to organise the west's response... how are you? ..and became a hero in kyiv. this is ukraine's finest hour that will be remembered and recounted for generations to come. in april 2022, the metropolitan police, who'd been investigating partygate, announced that the prime minister had broken covid rules. he'd attended a surprise birthday party for himself

in the cabinet room, and was given a fixed penalty notice. let me say immediately that i've paid the fine and i once again offer a full apology. well, i never thought that i would see the day where a british prime minister would be helping the police with their inquiries and be convicted of an offence and not go. that's the moment when i realised he had none of the decencies and that he had gone rogue. people think he's the first prime minister ever to have been found guilty of an offence, a crime. oh, no, i'm sure there are lots of prime ministers who've received fixed penalty notices for lots of things. speeding? no? it's a fixed penalty notice. i've certainly had two, so... i'll hold my hands up to them. sorry — i didn't have fixed penalty notices for partygate. they were for speeding! by now, many tory backbenchers had become so disillusioned

by the prime minister that they triggered a vote of no—confidence. i can announce that the parliamentary party does have confidence... cheering and applause. althouthohnson survived the vote, 40% of his own mps had voted against him and the tories then lost two seats in by—elections caused by sexual scandals involving their mps. johnson, meanwhile, was in africa at the start of a series of international meetings. i'm not going to pretend these are brilliant results. we've got to listen, we've got to learn. when people are finding it tough, they send messages to politicians. meanwhile, at westminster, a cloud no bigger than a man's wandering hand was emerging. onjune 30, chris pincher, the tory deputy chief whip, suddenly resigned.

the sun reported that he had groped two men at the members' only conservative carlton club in saint james's. his resignation letter to the pm opened with the words... initially, number 10 said that when he appointed pincher, johnson knew nothing about his reputation as a sexual predator. that line was dramatically upended on the morning ofjuly 5th by lord simon mcdonald, the former head of the foreign office. he came out publicly and revealed thatjohnson had been briefed in person about pincher�*s previous predatory behaviour. i know that the senior official briefed the prime minister in person because that official told me so at the time. i think they need to come clean.

that afternoon, having refused to answer questions about the pincher affair, the prime minister gave a mea culpa to the bbc. i think it was a bad mistake of mine to appoint chris pincher to the government, and i regret it and ijust want to make it absolutely clear that there is no place in this government for anyone who abuses their position of power. minutes after the tv interview went out, two senior ministers resigned from the cabinet in quick succession — the health secretary, sajid javid, and the chancellor, rishi sunak. both said they no longer trusted the prime minister. we have to conclude that enough is enough. the number of departures from across government reached over 60, a record. is it all over, prime minister? how many resignations will it take?

it was a bit like the armies of mordor were charging upon us and we were still battling. it was a bit... it was surreal. and ijust... i found it bizarre that people would be behaving in the way that they were. i found it quite odd that people weren't putting both their party and the country first above their own self—interest or their own ambition, their own personal ambition. it was surreal, yeah. we were fighting until the end, really, because itjust seemed the most stupid folly and the most... ..most ridiculous act of self—harm that could be inflicted on our party and our government. simon hart, are we reaching - the endgame for borisjohnson? i am late for a meeting in number 10. late for a meeting in number 10? simon hart, the welsh secretary, and long—timejohnson loyalist, was torn about whether he should resign.

i dithered like mad about this for ages, and i had friends of mine, saying — ringing me up, saying, "what the bloody hell are you still doing? "what's wrong with you? "why are you still there?" and i thought, well, you know, if anybody can turn this around, boris can turn it around. i hung on and i hung on as long as i possibly could. are you going to resign, mr hart? then he went to seejohnson in his office at number 10. my final conversation with boris actually was about, "look, whichever way you look, there's somebody, you know, "pointing a gun at you." and i rememberjust saying to boris, "look, you know, if the cabinet doesn't sort of get you, then the backbenchers, the 1922 committee will probably get you — if it's not this week, they'll get you next week." and being boris, typically, it was a case of, "well, i've got a chance." he said, "i can still turn this around." i said, "i don't think even you can do this, prime minister." hart resigned, as did the prime minister.

any regrets, prime minister? and in his final appearance at pmqs, johnson offered words of advice for his successor. focus on the road ahead — focus on the road ahead, but always remember to check the rearview mirror. we've helped...|�*ve helped get this country through a pandemic and helped save another country from barbarism and, frankly, that's enough to be going on with. mission largely accomplished for now. i want to thank everybody here and... ..hasta la vista, baby. thank you. johnson left the chamber to a standing ovation, but only from his own side. he gets the big decisions absolutely right, whether it was ukraine, covid, vaccines, cost of living support, financial support, got all the big calls right. people out there not in the westminster bubble, not in the media, not in politics,

but actually, the people out there who voted not for a conservative government, not for their local mp, but voted conservative for boris johnson, they don't understand what we've done, and...and i completely share their confusion. and i think we'll regret removing him as our prime minister, one of our most successful... in fact, our most successful prime minister in a generation. when he uttered those farewell words, "hasta la vista, baby," that hint in there that "one day you'll see me again, i'm not written off yet." he's certainly not written himself off in his own mind, but, my god, spare us. you did some very considerable things, but you blew it. you ignored the rules and the rules got you. when you say that he did some very considerable things, what are you thinking of? there are very few prime ministers who you are certain at the moment of their demise they're

going to leave a deep trace on history. borisjohnson is one because of brexit. boris will always be remembered — always — as the one who got us out. that's the bit where his legacy is assured. but that won't be enough of a comfort for him 'cause he wants so much more. simon hart saw it very differently when he wrote his resignation letter. "you'll be remembered as a prime minister with energy, vision, determination and humour. "there was never a dull moment as a minister in your government, "and i will be forever grateful to have been given the chance to be part of it." i just suddenly realised, it's glaring — i said �*upmost�*, not �*utmost�*. you want your generals to be optimistic and upbeat. there's nothing worse than serving under somebody who is convinced that we're going to lose. boris always convinced, whether it was covid, ukraine, the economy or anything else, that we were always going to win — always — always going to win, and that's an infectious leadership quality.

and do you think we haven't seen the last of him? yeah, i don't think we have — i don't think we will ever not see the last — or see the last of borisjohnson. he's like the silverback gorilla, isn't he? hejust dominates — he dominates everything that he's part of. boris is a chancellor — he is a chancellor. — — chancer. there've been lots of prime ministers who have been chancellors. people would have said that of churchill, that he was a bit of a chancellor in his day. but boris is not churchill. johnson himself was always concerned about his legacy. he once told me why he wanted to move from fleet street to westminster. as he put it, "because no—one puts up statues to journalists." hello. what across western parts of the uk and there are some for the rain, in parts of scotland and northern ireland. you can see those online. tonight, some of the heaviest rain across western parts

will ease before popping up again later in the night. rainfall pushing further north to scotland and showers developing into parts of england which will begin to fade away. quite a warm night. we start tomorrow with heavy rain, windy conditions in northern ireland and that will push away. further pulses of rain pushing north through scotland, persistently went through parts of eastern scotland. for wales in the western side of england, showery rain occasionallyjust pushing further into wards parts of the midland and across northern england. the eastern side, much of east anglia for example, stays dry with warm, sunny spells. sunday evening, the rain pepped up towards south wales and south—west england.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines. mourners pay their respects to the last soviet leader, mikhail gorbachev, who is now being buried in moscow. moscow blames maintenance problems for failing to resume the main pipeline that transports gas from russia to europe after a three day closure. it is going to be harder to fill up gas storage, it is going to raise the risks of energy shortages this winter, and it really sharpens the dilemma for european politicians as they plan for what could be a very difficult situation over the next few months. more than half of manufacturers in the uk say they may have to cut production or close down completely because of rocketing energy bills. a £2 cap on bus fares across england for three months from january is announced by ministers in the hope it will help people cope

with the rising cost of living. it will help with millions ofjourneys through the toughest