The law, which will apply across Great Britain, would ensure equal pay claims on the basis of ethnicity and disability are handled the same as those made by women, who currently have more stringent protections on pay than other groups. The 2010 Equality Act mandates that women and men are entitled to equal pay for equal work.

On Monday, Jacqueline Mckenzie, a lawyer who contributed to the taskforce set up by Labour to develop the new Race Equality Act, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the party’s plans were “a bold step”.

“What we’re not sure about, because we haven’t seen the act, is whether or not it will actually include enforcement penalties and mandatory reporting,” she said. “Because if it doesn’t do that it’s not actually going to make any difference.”

Under Labour’s plans for the Act, the law would be gradually introduced to give employers time to adjust to remunerating all their staff appropriately. Back pay will only be offered to workers from when the law officially comes into play. 

The proposals will take up the “dual discrimination” that some workers face, allowing them to bring a single claim if they believe they have experienced a combination of discriminations — for example, both sexism and racism, or ableism. 

Labour also announced it plans to appoint a Windrush commissioner if it wins the general election to surveil the compensation scheme, and that business groups and unions will be consulted before the law is enshrined. 

Shadow women and equalities secretary, Anneliese Dodds released a statement, saying “It has never been more important to deliver race equality.”

“Inequality has soared under the Tories and too many black, Asian and ethnic minority families are working harder and harder for less and less,” she wrote.

“This is holding back their families and holding back the economy. We are proud of our achievements in government, from the landmark Equality Act [in 2010] to strengthening protections against discrimination. The next Labour government will go further to ensure no matter where you live in the UK, and whatever your background, you can thrive.”

However, Dr Begum believes the proposals are not flawless.

“[The Act] fall short of addressing the formidable scale of inequalities that shape the experiences and opportunities of people of colour,” she said. 

“Committing to address structural racial inequality needs to understand that racism doesn’t simply arise when the system fails – but that racism is actually sewn into the very fabric of the system itself.”

“Labour must use the race equality act as a platform to commit to an ambitious, cross-governmental approach supported with sustained investment addressing the unacceptable – and in some cases worsening – disparities in health, housing, wealth and policing, faced by so many communities of colour.”

Minister for Equalities Kemi Badenoch is even more sceptical, calling the proposals “a bonanza for dodgy, activist lawyers”.

“[The Act would] set people against each other and see millions wasted on pointless red tape,” she wrote on X. “It is obviously already illegal to pay someone less because of their race.” 

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Braverman, who belongs to the right faction of the Conservative Party, was criticised for expressing her views in an article she wrote for Times of London last week where she accused the police of “play[ing] favourites when it comes to protesters” and turning a blind eye to “pro-Palestinian mobs” who she descried as “hate marchers”.

On Saturday, a huge pro-Palestinian rally was attended by hundreds of thousands of people in London. Police said up to 145 protesters were arrested, while nine officers were injured. 

In her article, Braverman said the rally was not “merely a cry for help for Gaza” but “an assertion of primacy by certain groups — particularly Islamists — of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland.”

She accused the police of a “double standard” in the way they managed the protests. 

“Right-wing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law,” she wrote.

The prime minister’s office had not approved the article in advance as is standard practice, causing many to continue their calls on Sunak to fire Braverman.

As Home Secretary, the 43-year old former barrister had one of the most senior jobs in government, responsible for managing immigration and policing.

Media commentators predict Braverman’s sacking will further rupture the tension already brewing within the Conservative Party’s right wing faction. 

On Monday, Braverman said “it has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve as home secretary”, adding that she will “have more to say in due course.”

Controversial figure

Braverman has previously run for the Conservative Party leadership, campaigning on hard-right platitudes against asylum seekers, homeless people and the expansion of charities. 

Last month, she called migration a “hurricane” that would bring “millions more immigrants to these shores, uncontrolled and unmanageable”.

In her keynote speech to the governing party’s annual conference in Manchester, she said that UK governments had been “far too squeamish about being smeared as racist to properly bring order to the chaos.”

Conservatives, she said, would give Britain “strong borders.”

She also said that the Human Rights Act should be called the “Criminal Rights Act.” 

“Our country has become enmeshed in a dense net of international rules that were designed for another era,” she said. 

“And it is Labour that turbocharged their impact by passing the misnamed Human Rights Act. “I’m surprised they didn’t call it the ‘Criminal Rights Act’.”

“Highly controversial ideas are presented to the workforce and to the public as if they’re motherhood and apple pie: gender ideology, white privilege, anti-British history,” she added. “And the evidence demonstrates that if you don’t challenge this poison, things just get worse.”

Around the same time, Braverman appeared on Sky News to express her transphobic views after the health secretary announced that sex-specific language would be used when dealing with women’s health, and that proposals were in place to ban transgender women from being treated in female hospital wards in England. 

“Trans women have no place in women’s wards or indeed any safe space relating to biological women,” Braverman said. 

“The Health Secretary is absolutely right to clarify and make it clear that biological men should not have treatment in the same wards as biological women. This is about protecting women’s dignity and women’s safety and privacy. Therefore I am incredibly supportive and welcome the announcement today by the Health Secretary.”

Earlier this month, Braverman announced plans to establish a civil offence to deter charities from giving tents to homeless people. She suggested imposing restrictions on charities that give tents to people living on the streets. She posted on X: “We cannot allow our streets to be taken over by rows of tents occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice.”

Braverman was thoroughly condemned for these views – a joint letter composed by UK charities including Crisis, Centrepoint, St Mungo’s and Pathway read: “Sleeping on the street is not a lifestyle choice. Laying blame with people forced to sleep rough will only push people further away from help into poverty, putting them at risk of exploitation. At the extreme end, we will see an increase in deaths and fatalities, which are totally preventable.”

Sunak has appointed former foreign secretary James Cleverly as the new Home Secretary. 

So who is the new foreign secretary? 

David Cameron. Yes. That David Cameron. The former PM, who led led the government between 2010 and 2016. 

In a statement, Cameron said Britain was “facing a daunting set of international challenges, including the war in Ukraine and the crisis in the Middle East.”

“While I have been out of front-line politics for the last seven years, I hope that my experience — as Conservative leader for 11 years and prime minister for six — will assist me in helping the prime minister to meet these vital challenges,” he said. 

“I’ve decided to join this team because I believe Rishi Sunak is a good prime minister doing a difficult job at a hard time. I want to support him.”

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 “We shouldn’t be bullied into believing people can be any sex they want to be, they can’t,” said Sunak during a speech at his first party conference as leader.

“A man is a man and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”

“We will be bold, we will be radical. We will face resistance and we will meet it,” he said, in a move to try to position his party as a force for change ahead of next year’s general election in the UK.  

The change he is calling for remains unclear, however, as statistics show transgender people are more likely than the general community to face bullying and harassment. 

Within the LGBTI community itself, the transgender community is the most targeted group, with transgender people more likely to experience threats of physical or sexual harassment or violence, according to a National LGBT Survey out of the UK. 

In 2020/2021, UK police recorded 2,630 hate crimes against transgender people– a likely underreported number as research also shows 88 per cent of transgender people don’t report hate crimes they experience. 

The effects of this harassment are great, with research this year showing that a majority of trans and non-binary young adults have experienced suicidal thoughts or feelings. And within the the LGBT community, trans and non-binary young adults were the most likely to have hurt themselves deliberately (76 per cent and 78 per cent respectively).

With such grim statistics already apparent, many trans-rights activists are concerned that Sunak’s high-profile transphobic comments will cause even more harm. 

Trans-rights activist and doctoral researcher Thomas Willett took to X (Twitter) to say Sunak’s anti-trans speech has the power to ignite real danger toward trans-people who “just want to live in peace”. 

Britain’s first transgender national television newsreader and first transgender co-host of an all-women talk show also shared her views on Sunak’s rhetoric. In a video posted to Twitter, India Willoughby called it “absolutely outrageous” and said “the biggest cheer of Rishi Sunak’s speech was when he pounced on the trans community– that was the scariest part”.

The UK is in the midst of turbulent debate over trans rights, and Sunak’s speech follows recently announced plans to ban trans women from female hospital wards. He referred to the ban when he said that patients “should know when hospitals are talking about men or women”.

This is also not the first time that Sunak has openly attacked the trans and non-binary community. In June of this year, he was secretly filmed mocking trans people, joking about “women having penises” and making fun of Lib Dem leader Ed Davey for supporting trans rights.

Sunak and former conservative PM Liz Truss also denied that trans women are women during a Conservative leadership hustings in August 2022. 

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45-year-old Carla Foster’s case has prompted thousands of protesters, women’s rights groups, politicians and media to call on the British government for abortion law reform.

This week, three judges at the UK’s Court of Appeal reduced the mother-of-three’s 28-month sentence to 14 months and suspended prison term. This means she’ll be released and would only return to jail if she breaks any court requirements.

Foster’s lawyer said she’d been denied communication with her three children since her prison sentence. And one of the court of appeal judges notably said Foster needed “compassion, not punishment”. 

Foster was first sentenced last month after admitting to obtaining abortion pills in 2020 to induce a miscarriage at 32 to 34 weeks pregnancy. 

Her sentencing was under legislation dating back to the Victorian-era of 1861 under the Offences Against the Person Act. This has sparked outrage from lawmakers and abortion rights campaigners.

Clare Murphy, head of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS)– the abortion care facility that provided Foster with the abortion medication– called the 19th century law used to prosecute women the “harshest penalty in the world”. 

Abortions in Britain are legal before 24 weeks and must be carried out in clinics after 10 weeks of pregnancy. 

The pills that Foster received in the post and ingested during Covid-19 lockdown were meant to be used in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. 

The prosecution said Foster had used her computer to search for things such as “how to hide a pregnancy bump”, “how to have an abortion without going to the doctor” and “how to lose a baby at six months”.

In a statement on the woman’s case, Murphy said: “The Court of Appeal has recognised that this cruel, antiquated law does not reflect the values of society today. Now is the time to reform abortion law so that no more women are unjustly criminalised for taking desperate actions at a desperate time in their lives.”

“We urge Parliament to take action and decriminalise abortion as a matter of urgency so that no more women have to endure the threat of prosecution and imprisonment.”

The UK’s leading charity campaigning for gender equality and women’s rights, Fawcett Society, echoed BPAS’s calls for law reform in Britain, writing on Twitter: “It was never, and is never, in the public interest to prosecute a case like this one. The law that allowed this to happen is so old it predates women’s suffrage– it is in no way fit for purpose in modern-day Britain. It wasn’t written by us, and it doesn’t work for us.”

“This story is not only about this one woman; it’s about a system that is truly broken. We must now turn our attention to the system that allowed this to happen and ensure no woman is ever treated this way again.”

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After a year-long investigation, a committee of lawmakers issued a condemning report on Johnson’s actions in what is largely known as the “partygate” scandal, where the former PM’s staff held a series of parties in 2020 and 2021 when such gatherings were prohibited by pandemic restrictions. 

“We have concluded above that in deliberately misleading the House, Mr Johnson committed a serious contempt,” the committee’s report said. “The contempt was all the more serious because it was committed by the Prime Minister, the most senior member of the government.”

“There is no precedent for a Prime Minister having been found to have deliberately misled the House.”

“He misled the House on an issue of the greatest importance to the House and to the public, and did so repeatedly,” the 106-page report stated.

In advance of the inquiry’s announcement, the House of Commons Privileges Committee informed Johnson that he would be sanctioned. However, the MP angrily quit as a lawmaker before this could occur, making the committee’s recommendation mostly symbolic. The suspension would have potentially triggered a by-election to replace him. 

“This is rubbish. It is a lie,” Johnson said in response. “In order to reach this deranged conclusion, the Committee is obliged to say a series of things that are patently absurd, or contradicted by the facts.”

A majority of the committee’s seven members come from Johnson’s own Conservative Party. In a statement, the former MP called the panel a “kangaroo court” that conducted a “witch hunt” to drive him out of parliament. 

On the eve of the report’s publication, Johnson also called for the panel’s most senior Conservative member, Bernard Jenkin, to resign over claims that he had broken pandemic restrictions as well. 

Deputy leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, Daisy Cooper called the move a “typical distraction tactic from Boris Johnson that doesn’t change the fact he broke the law and lied about it.”

“This damning report should be the final nail in the coffin for Boris Johnson’s political career,” the party’s deputy leader, Cooper said.

The Liberal Democrats have called for Johnson to be stripped of the £115,000 annual allowance available to former prime ministers to run their office.

Johnson’s seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in parliament will be contested in a special election in July.

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Maria Caulfield was appointed to the role by new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, drawing criticism from women’s rights groups and reproductive healthcare charities.

Caulfield was previously a vice chair of an all-party parliamentary “pro-life” group and just last month voted against the creation of buffer zones to prevent harassment outside abortion clinics. In 2019, she voted against legalising abortion in Northern Ireland.

Labour’s Shadow Women and Equalities Secretary, Anneliese Dodds, said Caulfield’s appointment as Minister for Women was “deeply troubling”.

“Deeply troubling that Rishi Sunak has appointed a Minister for Women who supports limiting women’s rights to abortion,” she said.

“The government must be clear that a woman’s right to a safe and legal abortion is not under threat.”

The British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) said it was “appalled” the Prime Minister had decided to appoint Caulfield, “who has consistently voted to restrict women’s rights”.

“Earlier this month, Maria Caulfield MP voted against measures to protect women seeking reproductive healthcare from harassment and intimidation at the hands of anti-abortion protesters,” BPAS wrote on Twitter.

“Our new Minister for Women also voted consistently to deny women in Northern Ireland access safe, legal abortion care in their own country.

“Maria Caulfield has also led the parliamentary opposition to attempts to protect women and decriminalise abortion, and has defended the current law which threatens any woman who ends her own pregnancy without the approval of 2 doctors with life imprisonment.

“This is not an abstract issue. In England, two women, who endured years of police investigations, are being dragged before the courts for seeking to end a pregnancy.”

The BPAS said Caulfield’s views are “out of step” with members of the public and her own party.

“Recent amendments to establish buffer zones around clinics and secure at-home early abortion care have passed despite the opposition of MPs including Maria Caulfield,” the organisation said.

“It is profoundly disappointing that the PM did not think that a better choice for Minister for Women would be an MP willing to speak up for the one in three women who will have an abortion.”

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In her resignation speech, Truss said her successor would be chosen within a week, meaning the next person will be the UK’s third prime minister in just over seven weeks and the fifth Tory PM in six years.

Conservative MPs have until 2pm on Monday, UK time, to nominate candidates and those candidates will need at least 100 nominations. 

There are 359 Conservative MPs in the House of Commons and it’s likely there’ll be three candidates for the prime ministership.

After that, a couple of things could happen.

First, if enough MPs supported one of the candidates, that person would automatically become party leader and prime minister.

Second, if two candidates are left, the decision will go to a ballot of members. 

Many MPs are hoping that the vote doesn’t go to the party membership as this is how elected leaders in recent years have gotten into office without being considered the best candidate by their peers in parliament. 

This was the case in 2015 with Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and this year with Liz Truss. 

So what names are floating around as potential candidates? 

Truss’ political opponent, Rishi Sunak is a likely candidate as he was the most popular candidate among Conservative lawmakers in the last election but lost the party membership vote to Truss. 

Former defence secretary, Penny Mourdant is also considered a likely candidate since she only just missed out on the final two-place run off in the recent leadership challenge. 

Meanwhile, many party members are signalling support for the former PM Boris Johnson to step back into office. Certainly a controversial option, however, since Johnson was pushed out of Downing Street following a series of scandals and is still facing an investigation into whether he misled parliament after holding a string of parties during COVID-19 lockdowns. 

Johnson is believed to be cutting his current Caribbean holiday short to race back to the UK this weekend and throw his name out there. 

Still, many have placed Sunak as the most likely option compared to Mourdant and Johnson. 

Other names being passed around are Ben Wallace and Jeremy Hunt, although both have said at one point in time that they don’t intend to run. 

Wallace is the UK defence secretary who won respect for his role in leading the UK’s support for Ukraine and is popular among MPs. 

Britain’s new Finance Minister, Hunt, is also seen as a stable leader after ripping up Truss’ economic agenda and trying to repair the damage. Truss placed Hunt in the role following her sacking of the former Finance Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng. 

Among speculation of these five candidates, there’s also been renewed calls for an immediate General Election by the Labour opposition. 

The Conservative Party will be keen to avoid this, however, with the latest opinion polls showing that the Tories would suffer a landslide defeat if a General Election went ahead. 

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It was only just last month that Truss beat out political opponent, Rishi Sunak, to take over from Boris Johnson and become Britain’s third female Prime Minister.

Why could Truss be out of the job so quickly?

Since Truss became Prime Minister, the UK’s economy has plummeted. 

The pound dropped to record lows after Truss pitched a mini-budget with billions of pounds of unfunded tax cuts and energy handouts that sparked market turmoil. This subsequently forced her to abandon everything she promised in her campaign. 

The mini-budget plan was announced and backed by Truss and the former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng.

After announcing the tax cuts, Truss and Kwarteng didn’t explain how they would fund the budget considering the government would now be taking in less tax revenue. 

Truss argued that the measures would promote economic growth and bring more revenue into government, but without an explanation for how the government was going to pay for the budget, pushback said that Britain would have to borrow more money and watch its debt levels increase. 

This lack of an explanation from Truss’s mini-budget fuelled investor concern, which pushed up government borrowing costs, raised home mortgage costs and sent the pound’s value to an all-time low against the dollar. 

The Bank of England was forced to intervene in the bond markets to protect pension funds. 

Labor Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Pat McFadden called Truss’s plan a “complete humiliation” for her. 

“The damage has now been done. She’s in an impossible position where the survival of the government is dependent on publicly torching everything that she believes,” McFadden says. 

Following this disaster, Truss sacked Kwarteng, who had spent less than six weeks in the role, and she made Jeremy Hunt the new UK Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

Nonetheless, more criticism of her leadership came along when Jeremy Hunt announced a U-turn of Truss’s proposed tax cuts. Much of the public viewed Truss’ authority as being undermined by her decision to let Hunt tear up her economic agenda, believing that Hunt is now running the government. 

This week, Hunt confirmed: “We will reverse almost all the tax measures announced in the growth plan three weeks ago that have not started parliamentary legislation.”

Following the U-turn announcement on tax cuts, Truss backpedaled on her commitment to the triple lock, meaning she no longer promises to increase state pensions in line with surging inflation. 

The PM’s spokesperson said Truss was “not making any commitments” on government spending and that the move away from the triple lock– having pension payments rise by whatever is highest: prices, average earnings or 2.5%– was a “mutual decision” by the PM and the chancellor.  

Will Truss be replaced?

Talking to the BBC, Truss apologised for “mistakes” in her program, but said she would not step down and that she “will lead the Conservatives into the next general election.”

Confidence in Truss’s leadership abilities, however, doesn’t seem redeemable from either the public or member’s of her own party. 

There are a few pathways open for Truss to leave office and it’s likely one will be successful quite soon. 

Truss stepped into the role of Prime Minister via an internal party ballot and as per Conservative Party rules, she has 12 months amnesty against a leadership challenge. This doesn’t mean, however, that enough pressure to resign couldn’t push her to step down of her own accord– this is the simplest and cleanest pathway.

Another option is for the Conservative Party to change their rules and allow a vote on her leadership. If enough Tory MPs submit letters of no confidence in Truss’s leadership, this could occur, with a new successor named in her place. Ben Wallace, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt are the three names being talked about for the role of Prime Minister. 

A third option – Parliament could trigger a general election in a motion of no confidence in the government. This is the least likely to occur but would also allow for the removal of Truss. 

Whatever it is that occurs in upcoming days, one thing’s for certain – Truss has made some disastrous mistakes in the short time she’s been at 10 Downing Street.

The public is in clear dismay with a YouGov poll released on Tuesday (London Time) showing almost eight in 10 people now disapprove of Britain’s Conservative government, the highest number recorded in 11 years.

As for the potential of a new Prime Minister, Truss’ successor would be the third Conservative Party leader in this electoral cycle and would have a hard time gaining back any ground that Truss has lost with the electorate.

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Most prime ministers would have resigned over any one of the scandals to engulf Boris Johnson’s government. Johnson, never one for tradition or rules, rode out nearly every crisis – but the Chris Pincher affair was the final straw. Led by Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, over 50 members of Johnson’s government resigned in a day and a half. Johnson has now resigned as party leader, vowing to remain PM until a new leader is chosen.

Johnson was not a typical leader, and his successor will have a difficult job. They will need to strengthen the Conservative party before the next general election (which could come sooner rather than later). They will need to distance themselves from the more problematic aspects of Johnson’s legacy, while steadying the ship and appealing to the electorate. Here are the likely runners and riders for this seemingly impossible task:

Ben Wallace

While not perhaps as well known as some of the candidates, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is considered a serious contender. He has been pivotal in the UK’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and was clear in the run-up to the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan that action was needed to evacuate UK citizens and others in danger. He did not resign from Johnson’s cabinet, which might count against him, but he certainly looks like a strong candidate. Early polling suggests Wallace is the candidate to beat, but the campaign will test his early popularity.

Penny Mordaunt

Minister of State for Trade Policy Penny Mordaunt is not necessarily a household name, but she is very respected within the Conservative party. Mordaunt was a short-lived but well-respected defence minister and recently Royal Navy reservist. She previously served as secretary of state for international development (before the department was merged with the Foreign Office). Like Wallace, Mordaunt stuck by Johnson over the last few days, but her popularity within the party might allow her to overcome that issue, particularly if she can play up her pro-Brexit credentials.

Rishi Sunak

The former chancellor was considered the leader in waiting in the early stages of the pandemic. His early successes with the furlough scheme elevated his status and profile, but his star faded fairly quickly. Questions over his wife’s tax status and wealth generally made Sunak seem out of touch with voters. He was also, along with Johnson, fined by police over lockdown parties in Downing Street. While he remains a strong candidate, he might have wished that his opportunity to stand for leader had come sooner.

Sajid Javid

Javid has the distinction of having resigned from a Johnson cabinet twice. His first resignation, from his role as chancellor just before the pandemic, was driven by his desire to appoint his own staff. He was invited back into cabinet after Matt Hancock’s resignation. While considered by many within the party as a very capable MP, with a working-class background that would count in his favour, some worry Javid showed a lack of judgment in rejoining the Johnson cabinet.

Nadhim Zahawi

Zahawi came to public prominence when he spearheaded the vaccine rollout. His time as education secretary has been viewed positively, but his move to the Treasury less than two days before telling Johnson to resign have made some question his motives. Perception that he allowed personal ambition to override his moral compass is likely to hurt Zahawi. He will need to answer for this when asked by the party and country.

Liz Truss

Currently overseas on official business, the foreign secretary will undoubtedly be thankful not to have been caught up in the chaos of this week. But is she too absent? While considered by many a “safe pair of hands” she is not a dynamic candidate for leader, and it is doubtful whether she can become an electoral asset to the party. If the Conservatives want a safe choice instead of another “exciting” leader to follow Johnson, Truss may have a shot.

Dominic Raab

The deputy prime minister is another potential leader in waiting. He has occupied a number of cabinet roles including secretary of state for Brexit, foreign secretary and now justice minister. While he certainly has a high-ranking position, he has had a number of missteps. As Brexit minister, he finished off the negotiations his predecessor David Davis began, then resigned because he couldn’t accept the deal he helped to finalise. As foreign secretary, he was criticised for his lack of speed during the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. That, coupled with his earlier comments calling British workers the “worst idlers in the world” before he joined the cabinet, make him a long shot for Downing Street.

The rest of the pack

On the backbenches, there are expected to be at least three potential candidates – former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, prominent Brexiteer Steve Baker, and well-respected backbench MP Tom Tugendhat. For any backbencher wanting to catapult themselves into Downing Street, the ride is likely to be bumpy. A track record of success is usually needed. This is harder for a backbencher, either because they have never been in cabinet, or because they have left cabinet (usually after being asked to). These individuals have a long road ahead of them.

There will be others who may want to scope out their prospects with the party. Cabinet secretaries Priti Patel or even Jacob Rees-Mogg might test the water, but they are likely to find it cold.

The battle ahead will inevitably have its twists and turns, and it is almost impossible to predict the outcome. Many within the Conservative party, and perhaps the country, will be hoping for less exciting times than they have recently lived through.

Victoria Honeyman, Associate Professor of British Politics, University of Leeds

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The unprecedented mass resignation of more than 40 members and aides in a 24-hour period, including Johnson’s finance minister, chancellor, and health secretary, come as calls for the prime minister to resign intensify.

Johnson has also sacked his political rival Michael Gove from cabinet, removing one of the most senior and long-standing figures in the Conservative Party.

It follows Johnson’s mishandling of sexual misconduct allegations against MP and former deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher.

So far, Johnson has refused to resign despite the uproar, vowing to push through amid the flood of resignations and letters of no confidence from within the government.

“At some point, we have to conclude that enough is enough,” former Health Secretary Sajid Javid told parliament on Wednesday. Javid was the first minister to resign as a protest of Johnson’s leadership.

Johnson’s prime ministership has been plagued by a string of continuous scandals, including being fined for attending a party that took place at Downing Street during COVID-19 lockdowns. He narrowly survived a vote of no confidence earlier in June and has since admitted that he was briefed about the misconduct allegations that had been made against Chris Pincher before promoting him.

In Parliament on Wednesday, the prime minister was asked under what circumstances he would resign, with Johnson insisting he would hang on to the top job because he had a “mandate”.

“Frankly, the job of a prime minister in difficult circumstances when you have been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going and that’s what I’m going to do,” Johnson said.

According to the BBC, a YouGov poll this week showed that 69 per cent of people in Britain thought Johnson should resign, including more than half of Conservative Party voters.

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MPs including former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, participated in a menopause awareness campaign that aimed to highlight the country’s lack of of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) products.

Organised by Labour MP Carolyn Harris, co-chair of the Department of Work and Pension’s Menopause Taskforce, and the menopause support provider Over the Bloody Moon, several male MPs tested the special vest, which was equipped with electric heated pads that imitate the sensation of hot flushes.

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting described the sensation of trying on the vest as “deeply unpleasant.”

“[There was] an enveloping heat,” he said. “How you would crack on with life I don’t know. I can’t wait to take this off.”

“Women are having to go private. For something that is so common like menopause, it is outrageous.”

Shadow Minister for Immigration, Stephen Kinnock, said wearing the vest felt like “a very intense kind of heat and an internal feeling, not like being warmed by the sun, but almost volcanic inside.”

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith had only worn the vest for a few seconds before he made the comment, “I’m feeling this on my back now.”

“Imagine making a speech in the House of Commons and suddenly getting a hot flush,” he said. “If [men] had this, we’d be complaining a lot.”

Harris joked, “If you pass out, we’ve got water.” The 61-year old Labour MP for Swansea East sponsored the event at Portcullis House in Westminster, and added “Welcome to my world. I don’t need the vest to be hot and bothered.”

“We need air conditioning, we need ventilation, fresh air, cold water,” she told BBC. “They’re not massive things but they’re enough to make a difference between surviving the day and actually getting through the day.”

Harris has been outspoken about her experience of menopause for many years. Last October, ahead of her private member’s bill concerning menopause, she led a group of supporters to Parliament Square in London to demand free prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy in England.

“It took me six years, having conversations with women, for me to realise I was going through menopause,” she said last year.

“There’s a hell of a lot of women my age, working in supermarkets in shops and they are exhausted. A lot of those women are going through menopause but they are not being treated, because in 2021 there is still not enough understanding about a condition that affects 51 per cent of the population.”

This week, she told reporters it was “easy to underestimate” the severity of hot flushes and the impact they have on a woman’s daily life. In fact, in the UK, menopausal symptoms contribute to one in 10 women leaving their jobs.

Harris hoped the menopause-simulating vests may help men empathise with the experience.

The vest was created by Over the Bloody Moon, an organisation offering advice on menopause to the public, and funded by women’s health company, Theramex, one of the biggest developers of HRT product in the UK.

Lesley Salem, founder of Over the Bloody Moon, told The Guardian, “Hot flushes are one of top three symptoms that impact on the lives of menopausal women – disrupting sleep, increasing levels of anxiety and often affecting women’s performance at work.”

In the past few months, the UK has seen a spike in demand for HRT drugs, causing widespread shortage of available products.

This has left many women sleepless and unable to work productively. Some women have resorted to trading HRT drugs in public carparks, or procuring them online at hugely inflated prices. 

In February 2020 alone, roughly 324,000 prescriptions were issued for HRT. By comparison, in the month of February this year, around 512,000 prescriptions for HRT were issued. In countries such as Scotland and Wales, prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy are already available for free. 

This week, a collective of prestigious medical charities, including British Menopause Society and Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, created a list of 11 new ‘practice standards’ for menopause care.

The standards include ‘holistic and individual’ support for women on their treatment options, advice on how to change their diets, quit smoking, reduce alcohol consumption, as well as information on HRT and other hormonal drugs. 

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It’s very rare that a civil servant becomes the focus of public debate and discussion. It’s even rarer for them to find their face splashed on every front page under a headline proclaiming they hold the fate of a prime minister in their hands.

But when Sue Gray was asked to investigate and report on “gatherings” held at 10 Downing Street during the early pandemic, her status as “the most powerful person you’ve never heard of” was suddenly shattered. By this point, you’ve almost definitely heard of her. But do we really understand what power she has in relation to Boris Johnson’s premiership?

Gray is a hugely respected civil servant who once took a career break in the 1980s to run a pub in Newry, Northern Ireland. The pub attracted drinkers from across the sectarian divide and maintaining order may well have prepared her for the challenges of regulating government.

She would later apply these skills as the Cabinet Office’s head of ethics and propriety (2012-2018) where she oversaw inquiries into a number of tricky topics, including allegations concerning the Conservative MP Damian Green and also the “plebgate” inquiry of 2014. From 2018-2021 Gray served as the permanent secretary of the department of finance in Northern Ireland and then returned to the Cabinet Office in May 2021 as second permanent secretary with responsibility for the union and constitution directorate.

A stellar career indeed, but all these years of service have not necessarily translated into great power when it comes to Gray’s investigation. It’s vital to note that this is an internal official investigation. It is not a parliamentary inquiry, let alone an independent statutory inquiry. This means that in strict constitutional terms the final report will end up on the desk of the prime minister.

Depending on what the report finds, it could lead to officials facing disciplinary proceedings and possibly even dismissal. But specific HR matters like this will remain confidential and it will be up to the cabinet secretary to decide how to proceed. The fact that Gray only took on the investigation when the cabinet secretary was himself forced to step down from leading the inquiry makes the whole affair even more complicated.

The inquiry does not have the power to determine whether the law was broken or not, and the Metropolitan Police have generally been reluctant to get involved. Even if the Gray report outlines serious breaches of the ministerial code, it is Boris Johnson who decides what action, if any, should be taken.

But in some ways, an assessment of Gray’s formal powers or constitutional position risks completely missing the point. Her inquiry matters for one simple reason: it may provide the spark and the ammunition that brings Johson’s government to an end.

The basis of this argument is to be found in the vast wealth of political science on blame-avoidance behaviour and intra-party politics. Put very simply, Boris Johnson has always adopted a high-risk approach to political life.

For him, rules were designed to be broken, conventions cast aside, restrictions rejected on the basis that such almost blame-seeking behaviour sustained not only almost constant media attention on him but also celebrity status among the public. This is exactly why Tom Bower’s biography of Johnson is sub-titled The Gambler. It’s also why constitutional commentators such as Peter Hennessy have sought to focus attention on the weakness of a constitution that relies almost on the voluntary self-restraint of the executive.

Johnson’s premiership has therefore been based on a very specific bargain. A largely reluctant parliamentary party begrudgingly supported Johnson’s brashness and buffoonery on the basis that he could at least attract and maintain the support of large sections of the public.

But if his popularity takes a nosedive then the bargain will quickly be terminated.

It’s this contextual dimension that explains exactly why Gray and her report are the focus of such febrile excitement. Depending upon what it finds and the evidence it presents it may well prove to be the straw the broke the camel’s back. Johnson’s brand has become tarnished, his popularity levels seriously dented, and his capital within the parliamentary party appears to be running on vapors.

Put slightly differently, Johnson appears to have little in the bank in terms of friends or favours to call in that might help him survive a potentially damming report. And if evidence emerges that he did know more than he has previously admitted then a charge of “misleading the House” could prove terminal.

The Gray inquiry is not really about parties, gatherings or “bring your own booze”. It is a lightning rod. It provides a test case for how to litigate multiple long-running anxieties and concerns about the prime minister’s approach to governing. These are concerns that were elaborated with great skill in a recent report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life.

Gray has no interest in bringing prime ministers down. She has no power to bring the prime minister down. But because the essential focus of her inquiry is on whether Johnson can be trusted to follow the rules or tell the truth, it resonates far beyond its formal terms of reference or status.

The only thing we therefore know with any certainty is that the publication of the Gray report promises to be anything but dull.

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