FOREIGN MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON RESIGNS FROM CABINET IN DARING SHOW OF NAKED AMBITION

UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson has become the second senior minister to resign from the Cabinet in 24 hours in a show of naked ambition that further undermines the position of Prime Minister Theresa May.

While Brexit Minister David Davis's resignation was purely an act of the highest principle, Johnson is a much cunning and self-serving "political animal" and wouldn't be resigning unless he thought it would ultimately work out to his political advantage. 

While Davis's resignation means Theresa May's government is in the wrong, Johnson's resignation means that government is also weak and likely to fall. 

Self-serving politicians only ever step down as a prelude to stepping up sometime in the future. This is how we should interpret this move by Johnson, who only joined the Eurosceptic Brexit camp in 2016 as a means to unseat the then Prime Minister David Cameron and further his own ambitions.

In his letter of resignation, Johnson accused the Prime Minister of betraying democracy:

It is more than two years since the British people voted to leave the European Union on an unambiguous and categorical promise that if they did so they would be taking back control of their democracy.

They were told that they would be able to manage their own immigration policy, repatriate the sums of UK cash currently spent by the EU, and, above all, that they would be able to pass laws independently and in the interests of the people of this country.

Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximise the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy.

That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt.

He also accused May of trying to reduce the UK to the status of an EU colony by insisting on accepting EU laws and standards on trade:

We are now in the ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law, without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health - and when we no longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made.

In that respect we are truly headed for the status of colony - and many will struggle to see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.

Essentially this is a letter not of someone who is leaving government, but instread of someone who clearly intends to return to government very, very soon.

Update: Johnson's old job of Foreign Minister handed to Jeremy Hunt.