Boris Johnson to resign: What happens next?

The prime minister has spoken to Tory 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady and agreed to stand down.

Prime minister Boris Johnson will stand down after speaking to the 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady. His intentions to leave have been signalled after the PM came under relentless pressure from within his Cabinet and on the back benches. Brandon Lewis and Helen Whately were among the MPs to hand in resignation letters this morning. They follow Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who both quit as ministers, while Michael Gove and the new Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi jointly called upon Johnson to leave.

What happens next? 

Boris Johnson will publicly announce his resignation later today.

If a Conservative leader resigns, this triggers a contest for a new party leader.

This happened in 2019 when Theresa May triggered an election when she stepped down in May of that year with this tearful speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJIv3yzC430 The election takes place in two stages. In the first stage (shortlisting), Conservative MPs put their own names forward. MPs then vote in a series of rounds to whittle down the candidates. In the first two rounds, the candidates who don’t meet a certain threshold of votes are eliminated. For all subsequent ballots, the candidate who comes last is eliminated, until there are only two candidates remaining. In stage two, the party membership is balloted on which of the two final candidates they prefer. The timescale for each contest is set out by the 1922 Committee.