Boris Johnson has been lucky with Lord Geidt’s resignation

The twist in Lord Geidt’s tale was that it was a threat to break international law that finally pushed him over the edge. The prime minister’s adviser on ministerial standards said in his letter of resignation that he could just about live with Boris Johnson breaking domestic criminal law.

“I believed that it was possible to continue credibly as [an] independent adviser, albeit by a very small margin,” Lord Geidt said, after the prime minister explained that he thought it was all right for him to be fined for breaking coronavirus law.

But then on Monday, the prime minister asked him to advise on “potential future decisions” about protecting the British steel industry by continuing to apply tariffs that “might be seen to conflict with our obligations under the World Trade Organisation”, as Johnson put it in his reply to Geidt’s letter. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is set up by treaties, which means that its rules are international law.