Boris ‘did have numbers’ to challenge Rishi for leader

BORIS JOHNSON had enough support to challenge Rishi Sunak in the leadership race, the chairman of the 1922 committee has confirmed.

Sir Graham Brady disclosed that Mr Johnson secured the 100 nominations from MPS he needed to get on to the final ballot paper.

Speaking to the BBC, Sir Graham said that “two candidates” had reached the threshold, and “one of them decided not to then submit his nomination”.

His remarks will put an end to the speculation and doubt over whether Mr Johnson did in fact have enough backing from MPS to get him over the line in the most recent leadership contest.

When the only other candidate – Penny Mordaunt – also withdrew with a minute to spare having not reached the threshold, it left Rishi Sunak to be crowned as prime minister.

Sir Graham also spoke about his experience meeting with Liz Truss, just hours before she resigned, to tell her that she no longer commanded a majority support from Tory MPS.

Sir Graham said he went to Ms Truss’s quarters and described the conversation they had: “She asked me the question, she said: ‘It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’ To which I replied: ‘Yes, it is pretty bad’.

“And [then] she asked: ‘Do you think it is retrievable?’ And I said: ‘No .... ’ And she replied that she didn’t either.”

Referring to the meeting with Ms Truss, Sir Graham said in some ways it was “the most straightforward because she had come to the same conclusion”. He said the conversation he had with Mr Johnson the evening before his resignation had been slightly different.

“Well, when I saw Boris the evening before he announced his resignation, he was at that point still determined to go on,” Sir Graham said. “And he mulled it over after that, and he called me early the next morning to say that he changed his mind.”