The finance and health ministers resigned within minutes of each other on Tuesday after repeated scandals involving Downing Street.
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They slammed the door a few minutes apart, tired of repeated scandals. In the United Kingdom, two ministers resigned a few minutes apart on Tuesday, July 5. A blow for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, increasingly weakened.
Health Minister Sajid Javid tendered his resignation explaining that the head of government had “lost his confidence” in a letter posted on Twitter. He was followed minutes later by Finance Minister Rishi Sunak.
These two resignations came shortly after Boris Johnson’s public apology for the February appointment of Chris Pincher in his government. The latter resigned last week, after being accused of touching two men. Downing Street initially denied being told of older accusations, a version discredited by a former senior Foreign Office official. On Tuesday, Downing Street admitted that the Prime Minister had indeed been informed in 2019 of charges against Chris Pincher, but that he had “forgotten” by naming it.
The Pincher affair will have been the last straw for Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak, weary of the scandals that have shaken the government and the Prime Minister’s entourage for months. Boris Johnson was already significantly weakened by the Downing Street party scandal, despite restrictions in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Several cases of a sexual nature have been added to Parliament. These scandals occur in a tense social climate, with inflation at its highest for 40 years, at the origin in particular of a massive strike by railway workers. “The public legitimately expects the government to be conducted in a competent and serious manner” and “that’s why I’m quitting”, Rishi Sunak wrote in his letter to Boris Johnson. For his part, Sajid Javid judged that the British were entitled to wait “of integrity on the part of their government”.