Fourteen have left Boris Johnson’s government today, and since 6pm yesterday evening, when then chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid resigned, a total of seventeen ministers have left. More junior, non-ministerial Tory MPs have also resigned, meaning several dozen members of the government have now left. It means more ministers have resigned in the last 24 hours from Boris Johnson’s government than during the entire prime ministerships of David Cameron and Gordon Brown, according to figures from the Institute for Government. Thirteen ministers resigned during Gordon Brown’s almost three-year tenure, with the same number resigning during Cameron’s six-plus years in office. Boris Johnson’s prime ministership has been marked by ministerial resignations at a faster rate than any other prime minister since 1979. Only when Theresa May led a Conservative Party divided by Brexit did more ministers quit in a shorter space of time in her first three years in office. As well as resignations from Mr Johnson’s cabinet, several international trade envoys and parliamentary private secretaries have left their posts, while other Tory colleagues have publicly declared their lack of confidence in the prime minister. Boris Johnson needs to stay in office for around another month if he is to surpass Theresa May’s time in office. If he fails, he would become the fourth shortest-serving prime minister since World War II. Johnson won a vote of no confidence from his parliamentary party in early June, but it resulted in 41.2% of his Conservative MPs voting against him. Some MPs who said they had voted for the Prime Minister at the time announced they would vote differently if the vote were held again. Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, who lost the support of a smaller percentage of MPs than Boris Johnson in no-confidence votes in 1990 and 2019, lasted less than six months in office after those votes. At Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon Boris Johnson promised to “carry on”, despite growing calls from his colleagues for him to stand down. The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to delivering transparent journalism from Sky News. We collect, analyze and visualize data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite imagery, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while showing how our journalism is done. Why data journalism matters to Sky News
