Boris Johnson resigns as foreign secretary Read more

Over the past few weeks, Boris Johnson has, according to his friends, acquired a “haunted” air, as the incremental but inevitable moment that the cabinet would sign up to a soft Brexit crept ever closer.

Those close to the foreign secretary say that he feels he has been “bounced” into agreeing to a deal that is a world away from the hard Brexit he campaigned for. “He thinks that what’s on the table is so flawed we might even be better off staying in,” one said.

After he had shared his concerns with cabinet colleagues at the Chequers summit, saying anybody defending the deal would be “polishing a turd”, Johnson fell into line. One cabinet minister told the Guardian: “He was actually very big about it and by dinner spoke passionately in favour of making it work.”

While he is understood to be deeply unhappy about the plan, Johnson has agreed to keep his reservations to himself – at least for now. But he still emerges tarnished from the process, which came after a difficult few weeks in which he missed the Heathrow vote and suggested government should “fuck business” over Brexit.

After the Chequers Brexit summit: what happens now? Read more

“Boris’s stock has gone down,” said one senior Brexiter source. “A lot of MPs are unimpressed that he didn’t push the prime minister to the brink on this and threaten to go. It just looks like he’s in it for himself so he can keep his job”.

Brexiters’ reaction to Johnson, however, is muted in comparison with how they feel about Michael Gove, who was described by Downing Street insiders as “instrumental” in persuading leave cabinet ministers to back May’s plan.

One No 10 source said: “It was a point after which the tide turned and people started to talk about how we can sell this.” The environment secretary was then first out of the traps to defend the plan on the Sunday broadcast round.

“I’m a realist – and one of the things about politics is you mustn’t, you shouldn’t, make perfect the enemy of the good,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show.

Gove, already viewed with suspicion by many for knifing Johnson during the last Conservative leadership contest, has now given Eurosceptics another reason to mistrust him. One senior Tory described him as “the main snake in the grass.”

His supporters, however, insist that when faced with the realities of parliamentary arithmetic, the commitment to the backstop and the lack of preparedness for a no-deal Brexit, he felt he had no choice but to adopt a “pragmatic” approach. “He may have screwed his leadership chances, but what was the alternative?” one asked.

Pro-Brexit MPs, disillusioned and feeling let down by their cabinet representatives, are now expected to corral even more closely around Jacob Rees-Mogg. The hopes of Johnson and, in particular, Gove of winning back their support, in the event of a leadership contest, at this point look dim.

“I’m very, very disappointed with the offer that we’ve seen coming out of Chequers,” Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said. “I’m disappointed that so-called Brexiters in the cabinet didn’t pick up the cudgels and fight for a better offer.”