Boris Johnson DID have the votes to challenge Rishi Sunak – Sir Brady 

Sir Graham Brady has confirmed Boris Johnson did have enough MPs supporting his bid for election to challenge Rishi Sunak. 

It had been believed the former PM didn’t meet the 100 thresholds and it was the real reason he pulled out of the race. 

But Sir Graham said Boris Johnson had just decided not to stand. 

He also opened up about speaking to Liz Truss when she realised she would need to step down. 

Liz Truss conversation ‘easy and straightforward’

He said the chat was “the easiest and most straightforward” of the three similar conversations he has held with Conservative leaders facing the end of the premiership “because she had come to the same conclusion” as him.

In a BBC interview, Sir Graham said he had decided to call Downing Street to tell the country’s shortest-serving PM, her position was “unsustainable” following “utter chaos” during one of the final Commons votes of her administration. 

He said he was reaching for his phone when he got a message saying the PM  wanted to meet him. 

“When I went in to see her with her chief of staff Mark Fullbrook, she asked me the question – she said ‘it’s pretty bad, isn’t it?’ To which I replied ‘yes, it is pretty bad'”.

“She asked the second question, ‘do you think it’s retrievable?’. And I said ‘no, I don’t think it is’. And she replied that she didn’t either.”