The resignation of his ethics adviser won’t be the last scandal attached to Boris Johnson
One of the few things that the prime minister’s friends and foes might find common ground on is that there’s never a dull moment with Boris Johnson. Not, it must be added, always in a good way. Indeed, pleasant surprises about Mr Johnson seem to be something of a rarity.
This is the essential context to the latest Johnsonian scrape, the resignation of Lord Geidt, the second independent adviser on ministerial conduct to quit in less than two years.
The last 24 hours or so have yielded the further unwelcome revelation that the prime minister seems to have tried to recruit Lord Geidt to provide unlikely cover for what the peer suspected was a “deliberate and purposeful breach of the ministerial code”. To him, it was an “affront” to ask him to effectively countenance a breach of the code that he is supposed to uphold, with the overarching obligation, common to ministers and advisers, to obey the law. He was being walked all over, again. It was the final insult.
