\n
Boris Johnson had signed up enough MPs to mount a challenge to Rishi Sunak for the Conservative leadership, senior Tory Sir Graham Brady has confirmed.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
Mr Johnson dramatically pulled out of the race amid speculation he did not have the 100 nominations needed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
But Sir Graham, who runs Tory leadership contests, said Mr Johnson had just decided not to stand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
He also spoke for the first time about his meeting with Liz Truss when she realised she could not go on as PM.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
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 their time in power “because she had come to the same conclusion” as him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
As chairman of the powerful 1922 backbench committee, it falls to Sir Graham to deliver the bad news to Tory leaders clinging to power that they no longer command the support of their MPs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
In an interview with BBC North West Tonight, Sir Graham said he had decided to call Downing Street to tell Ms Truss her position was “unsustainable,” following “utter chaos” during one of the final Commons votes of her administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n- Graham Brady: The man who sees off Tory PMs<\/li>\n
- Standing not the right thing to do, says Johnson<\/li>\n
- Tory members vent fury over no vote on Rishi Sunak<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Confusion over whether the vote on fracking was a confidence vote in her came amid crumbling support for her doomed premiership from Tory MPs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
“I was reaching for my phone when I got a message saying the prime minister had asked to see me,” the Altrincham and Sale West MP told the programme.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
“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'”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
“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.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
By contrast, he recalled a meeting with Mr Johnson the night before he announced his resignation in July this year, when he was “still determined to go on”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
“He [Mr Johnson] mulled it over after that, and he called me early the next morning to say that he’d changed his mind.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n