Boris on the brink: how Johnson reached the edge of disaster

Reading from a script that, a year on, seems depressingly familiar, he said a new strain of Covid-19 (which would become known as the Alpha variant) was taking hold and was thought to be up to 70% more transmissible than the old one.

In an area of Downing Street occupied by advisers and his press team, through which Johnson and his wife, Carrie, have to pass to get to their flat at the top of the building, several dozen officials gathered over the course of that evening for drinks, nibbles and party games at the end of another long week.

This weekend large sections of the Tory party are in total despair. Only a month ago it was the Owen Paterson affair, a catastrophic prime ministerial misjudgment which triggered weeks of Tory sleaze stories. It is the regularity of these disasters that incredibly has led some Conservative MPs to think, for the first time, about scenarios under which the man who won them an 80-strong majority two years ago might have to be thrown overboard.

And all as yet another Covid variant, Omicron, surges across the UK, requiring public compliance and patience with another round of government restrictions at Christmas.

Officials had been rehearsing with Stratton for planned broadcast press conferences (which then never happened because everyone concluded the idea would backfire) and wanted to see how she would react and what she would say if journalists ever found out.

Some admitted writing, if not sending, letters of no confidence to Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, as they toyed with attempting to trigger a leadership contest.

In midweek, Downing Street tried to get senior ministers on radio and TV to defend Johnson, but they all found excuses not to do so.

Later on Wednesday afternoon, a tearful Stratton appeared outside her London home and announced her resignation, which Johnson accepted, presumably hoping that would at least restore some calm.

Then on Thursday, voters go to the polls in what should be the safest of safe Tory seats in a byelection in North Shropshire caused by the resignation of Paterson, whose case started the whole downward spiral for Johnson. Sensing an unlikely electoral scalp, the Liberal Democrats have been flooding the constituency and were on course to have a record number of activists there this weekend.