The former shop steward of backbench Tory MPs has told how Boris Johnson changed his mind and decided to resign as Prime Minister after a revolt by ministers.
Lord Brady, who was chairman of the 1922 committee of backbench Conservative MPs, gave details of the dramatic downfall of Mr Johnson in the summer of 2022.
As Mr Johnson and the Tory Party were engulfed in controversy, then Sir Graham had a meeting with him on July 6 after the resignations of Rishi Sunak as Chancellor and Health Secretary Sajid Javid the previous day, with growing calls from MPs for him to stand down.
“I told him what I thought was going to happen,” recalled Lord Brady.
“He had been absolutely determined that he was going nowhere and he was going to fight on.
“At that point, I was just thinking I don’t know how this is going to end but it’s going to be messy.”
But having dwelled on his situation overnight, Mr Johnson’s had had a change of mind by the morning.
“It was early the next morning that I had a phone call from Boris’ office just saying the Prime Minister wants a word with you on the phone, he will call you in about an hour’s time,” Lord Brady told GB News.
“I think it was then 8.30 that Boris phoned me and said, the conversation we had last night, I’ve changed my mind.
“The logic and the pressure of events was such and at that point I think he was struggling to get people to serve as ministers in his government.”
In his memoirs, Kingmaker: Secrets, Lies, and the Truth about Five Prime Ministers, Lord Brady rejected claims that Tory MPs were “trigger happy” at putting in letters of no confidence in PMs.
He added: “Actually, they were very cautious, very responsible about it, they knew it was a very significant thing to do.”
The former MP for Altrincham and Sale West who was elected 1922 chairman in 2010, gives a timeline in his book of letters received, which highlights how Tory MPs were “responding to events, how pressures on them were influencing their behaviour”.
He rejected claims by Brexiteers that there were around 50 letters of no confidence in Rishi Sunak as PM, and that this pushed him into calling an early election in July.
In fact, only ten letters had been put in.
He stressed the importance as 1922 chairman of keeping secret the number of letters of no confidence received, even from the Prime Minister rather than telling him or her.
“The danger of doing that it would influence their behaviour,” he stated.
“It would be very tempting for a chairman of the 1922 to say, you have got to change this policy, you have got to change that policy, the colleagues don’t like it, you are going to be in trouble.
“But if you started doing that I think it would mess the whole system up.
“It’s got to be completely private.”
