LONDON — Late Wednesday night, Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson defied, refused to quit, rejected pleas from cabinet colleagues telling him the game was up and even fired one of them, Michael Gove, a friend and rival since their days together at Oxford University.
Despite everything that had been piled up against him, Mr. Johnson didn’t leave quietly. So the blows kept coming.
Simon Hart, the secretary of Wales, was the next to retire, and on TV the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, not only called on Mr Johnson to leave, but declared himself a candidate to succeed him.
By late Wednesday, dozens of ministers or senior aides had resigned in an exodus that threatened to cripple decision-making in several government departments.
By breakfast, the Downing Street line of Mr. Johnson sitting at his desk working on rearranging his top team was no longer credible. There were too many vacancies and too few loyalists to fill them.
At the beginning of Thursday, another minister, Brandon Lewis, the secretary of Northern Ireland, resigned, saying things were “beyond the point of no return” and adding: “I cannot sacrifice my personal integrity to protect the defend things as they are now.”
Six junior ministers followed suit, including Security Secretary Damian Hinds and a Treasury Secretary Helen Whately.
But it seems Mr Johnson finally got the message when even those he recently promoted turned against him. Less than 48 hours after becoming finance minister, Nadhim Zahawi demanded that the prime minister who gave him the job step aside.
Then the newest cabinet member, Michelle Donelan, who had been appointed to replace Mr Zahawi in his previous role as Education Secretary, resigned from her new position.
Not long after, word came from Downing Street that Mr Johnson had acknowledged what had been apparent for some time – that his time in that building was drawing to a close and that he would be addressing the nation later on Thursday.