Political gravity is catching up with the prime minister

Slow and unsteady: Boris Johnson failed to act decisively over Chris Pincher

- JOHN RENTOUL

The government's working majority has just gone down again. After the two by-elections last week it dropped to 75. Now it is 73, because Chris Pincher, who resigned as deputy chief whip on Thursday night, has ceased to be a Conservative MP, thus deducting one from the number of government MPs and adding one to the non-government total.

Boris Johnson and Chris Heaton-Harris, the chief whip, belatedly agreed that Pincher should be suspended from the parliamentary Conservative Party while the allegations against him are investigated. This was after a whole day during which it proved impossible to find a Conservative MP, let alone an opposition one, who thought that Pincher should avoid being suspended. Indeed, the day started with Simon Hart, the Welsh secretary, saying that he had a view about Pincher's future but he wasn't going to say what it was.

Once again, the prime minister has made things worse for himself and the government. His failure to sack Matt Hancock immediately when it was revealed a year ago that he had broken coronavirus guidelines by his affair with Gina Coladangelo caused Johnson a surprising amount of difficulty. I thought at the time that Johnson acted out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, thinking that he should allow Hancock time to come to the inevitable conclusion and resign - which he did - rather than sack him peremptorily.