Theresa May must beware, a coup could be just around the corner, by Lucy Fisher.

It looked by mid-morning Monday (local time) as though Theresa May could contain the fallout from losing her Brexit secretary, David Davis.

The departure this morning (AEST) of her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, pushed the crisis into new territory. He quit just 30 minutes before the Prime Minister was due to make a statement to parliament about her Brexit blueprint agreed at Chequers on Friday.

Speculation has continued to mount that Mr Johnson is mulling a leadership challenge. He has not appeared in public since holing up with his advisers on Monday morning, missing a Cobra meeting and the Western Balkans summit that he was scheduled to be chairing. …

This is the first time two cabinet ministers have quit within 24 hours of each other — outside cabinet reshuffles — since 1979, according to the BBC analysis and research team. …

One cabinet minister said that the loss of Mr Davis and Mr Johnson was inevitable. “At some point or other the reality that you cannot simultaneously have an economically successful Brexit that keeps the union together and brings us control and flexibility untrammelled by Johnny Foreigner — you cannot have all of that at the same time.

“Difficult choices have to be made and we are not living in a fantasy world. Some of the people who put us into this position now want to run away from it.”

The elite will not do as the electorate commanded — chaos and conflict ensue.