Rather like that unexpected gesture, this is a pleasant surprise: a genuinely unusual, bold and important book. You can’t say that of many political memoirs. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops Any normal politician in Johnson’s position would go now, trying to retain a sense of dignity. Whether or not Johnson is forced out by a vote of Tory MPs, he is likely to be confronted by the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady, telling him the jig is up. Dismissive about Labour – she’s a proper Tory – May is prepared to be sharp about her own side, too. Looking at the wider picture after Grenfell, she complains that too many Conservatives came to see social housing as a matter of problem families and problem individuals, refusing to hear what they were saying. She thinks that, in Laurie Magnus, Rishi Sunak has appointed an ethics adviser without sufficient experience. And after a withering account of modern slavery in Britain she says of the current Prime Minister: “To my dismay, the government’s approach… has been driven by the desire to deal with illegal immigration rather than by the wish to stop slavery.”

The speech proved divisive among viewers, with some hailing it as “speaking for all of us” while others accused Marr of delivering his criticism too late. At school I was always on stage. I played the head teacher in Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On, and the main role in Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi. I remember that vividly because my opening line was something like ‘shitter bugger’, which as a small boy is a great opening line. Rishi Sunak, who seemed such a favourite as a future prime minister before the disaster of the Spring Statement and the controversy over the tax status of his wife, has the resilience of the seriously wealthy. There are not many people in the higher echelons of Westminster whom you could imagine walking away, perfectly happily, into an entirely different life. But he is one of them. It is a great mistake to believe that we are an island. If we are on the edge of war, we should never forget that wars tend to upend everything we think we know about politics. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed. There’s a standard political memoir, isn’t there? It bubbles along as if scripted by a politically savvy AI engine: amusing and affecting anecdotes of the hero’s early life and university successes; feelings of inadequacy on reaching parliament; vivid descriptions of the scramble up the ladder, including quotable digs at rivals and opponents; the strange absence of the scandal for which the author will be mainly remembered; the self-aggrandising account of the author’s many successes in office, this part at wearisome length.

He knows that changing the voting system would mean the breakaway of a modest number of hardcore socialist radicals. He could live with that. Indeed, it might make his life as prime minister easier. He also knows, surely, that it would splinter the Conservatives much more damagingly; Nigel Farage’s come-hither wooing of Boris Johnson has already begun. The end result, if Starmer is bold enough, could indeed be the securing of a moderate, liberal, centre-left political establishment – although at the price of admitting more extreme politics at either edge (under PR, Farage’s Ukip would have won more than 80 seats at the 2015 general election).

We are in a big hole as a country, we have very, very hard choices to come and frankly if Keir Starmer takes over, he has a bit of a nightmare on his hands." Rishi Sunak nervously waits to see if more Boris Johnson allies will quit as MPsMPs from both sides of the warring Conservative Party have been writing in the Sunday papers about Boris Johnson's next moves.Speaking on LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, the presenter analysed how Mr Johnson continues to maintain his ability to dominate the headlines - despite Nicola Sturgeon being arrested and the death of ex-Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. Everywhere, good people and bad people. May is not the world’s most eloquent talker, but she’s an attentive listener: it was remarks by Lenny Henry at a Stephen Lawrence commemoration service that first brought home to her the bureaucratic nightmare being faced by the Windrush families. For their treatment generally, she now says: “I am profoundly sorry.” The comments follow Boris Johnson's resignation as Tory MP with "immediate effect" on Friday, releasing a lengthy statement posted online, just hours after ally and former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries announced her own resignation.

A new executive for the 1922 Committee could change the rules and, if submerged by a sea of new letters, hold a leadership contest almost immediately. “We could do the whole thing in a matter of days,” one anti-Johnson Tory told me. Boris Johnson strikes againRishi Sunak wants to present Britain’s Conservative Party as competent. Boris Johnson’s departure, and three attendant messy by-elections, revive the sense of shambles Unsurprisingly, the Lib Dems have been moving fast. Rhiannon Leaman, Ed Davey’s chief of staff, who lives in Leighton Buzzard, and Dave McCobb, director of field campaigns, were on the ground quietly scoping Mid Bedfordshire a good week before Nadine Dorries announced her resignation as an MP. Although Dorries had a 24,000 majority over Labour in 2019, with the Lib Dems in third place, by-elections are different beasts. The Lib Dems have concluded that too few disappointed Tories would defect straight to Labour, but that Mid Bedfordshire is just the kind of “Blue Wall” seat they can take.Labelling the current Tory part a government "governed by Whatsapp", Marr added that "like the country at the time of the Brexit referendum, he didn't know what was coming next. But what of voting reform? This is a more interesting proposition. If Starmer was able to bring together the large but long-separated Liberal and Labour traditions, he could make 2024 not the moment of another, possibly short-lived, Labour interruption in British politics but the beginning of a long, left-liberal hegemony, as long-lasting as the Conservative one has been.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Brexit argument, Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg were approaching May in early 2019 to ask her to get the Queen to prorogue parliament or, if the Remainers won key votes, to refuse royal assent. Labour have had their own teams flat out in Uxbridge (where Boris Johnson was MP) and Mid Beds – and in Selby and Ainsty, whose Conservative MP Nigel Adams has also stood down. Selby looks almost as safe as any Tory seat could be, and Adams had a 60 per cent share of the vote at the last election. But his seat is being redistributed in a way that helps Labour and it has become one of its less obvious targets: the party will fight very hard here.

His tone is light, even flippant, but his commentary is both incisive and profound. There were no more than two or three occasions, as far as I can recall now, where his style of writing jarred. One was where he was at pains to point out that he does not believe in God; it didn’t add anything to what he was saying, and by comparison with his usually carefully phrased commentaries it stood out. I was going to say, “like a sore thumb” but then remembered that I actually got a sore thumb while reading this book, as it’s pretty fat and heavy last thing at night as one is drifting off . . .. but that didn’t add anything either to what I am supposed to be writing about, so I shall stop being hard on Andrew Marr for the odd personal intervention in a book that engrosses, elucidates and elevates. Putin is very sharp intellectually, but has a menacing presence. Elton John once asked me to give him a kiss on the cheek and a Donna Summer album. I’d interviewed Elton in Sochi before the opening of the winter Olympics. I didn’t give Putin the album, but I asked him if he had gay friends (he does) and whether he was homophobic. He said he wasn’t, but that he enjoyed Elton’s music very much. Politicians in London must start talking to forces inside Israel beyond Netanyahu’s cabinet. We need better conversations with Egypt, Fatah, Jordan and the Israeli opposition, and a major international aid programme. How developed is Labour’s foreign policy network beyond Europe? That is, suddenly, an important question.