Why May sacked Green - and why it changes everything

The sacking of Damian Green may be seen as remaking Theresa May's government in a fundamental way.

It is a big moment.

How so?

Well, she has now lost two ministers - Green and Fallon - who would have died in a ditch for her. She is personally weaker for their departure.

Second, she has lost the most enthusiastic of the EU Remainers from the cabinet. Pending his replacement, the balance of the cabinet is much more strongly Brexit Ultra than it was.

Finally, she has sacked a minister - on advice from Whitehall - for reasons that will trouble the sleep of more than a few ministers.

The point is that he was dismissed not because he lied about his activities as a minister, but because as a minister he misled about what many would see as his private life.

What did for him was that he didn't tell the truth in two press statements about how the police had informed him, in 2008 and 2013, that porn had been found on his office computers when he was a backbench MP.

This sets a strikingly low bar for ministerial sackings. And only the most extreme fantasist among Mrs May's ministers will be able to persuade themselves they've never lied to a journalist, even on the record (and of course it is the fantasists, of whom there are a few in the Cabinet, who are most vulnerable to future defenestration, following the Green precedent).

Which brings me to my own mea culpa, that I reported 11 days ago what I had been told by authoritative sources, namely that the PM would not sack Green.

Why were they confident of that?

I understand that at the time, the keeper of the government's conscience, Sue Gray of the Cabinet Office, had only one example of Green making a misleading press statement about what he knew about the computer porn. And just one inaccurate statement could have been seen as an accident.

Green was expected by the prime minister to cling on because this one example of misleading the press could be seen as cock-up not conspiracy.

But after I reported that Green was likely to survive, Gray was made aware of a second similar statement - and that established the lethal pattern of Green being systematically economical with the truth.

Which sealed his fate.

May felt she had no choice but to get rid of him after she was told yesterday afternoon that her independent adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Alex Allan, had endorsed the conclusion of the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, that Green had breached the Ministry Code and fell short of the honesty requirement of the Seven Principles of Public Life.

And in the manner of his defenestration, power in the May administration has shifted in two more important ways.

Whitehall, and in particularly the Cabinet Secretary, Heywood, have reasserted their authority, having for months looked like affection-starved poodles.

Green's exit also shines a new light on the political troika - the chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, the former chief whip and now defence secretary Gavin Williamson, and the current chief whip Julian Smith - who live and breathe to serve HER.

They did not die in a ditch to save Green. In fact their colleagues tell me they actively want to see the back of what they see as the "old men" like Green in the Cabinet, so that the government can be remade in their "new Tory generation" image.

Will they persuade her to use the going of Green to do that substantial reshuffle which she's been eschewing for months and which terrifies much of her cabinet?

Before he went, May's colleagues thought she was too frit.

But for the avoidance of doubt, they'll now be kept on tenterhooks till after the new year.

And having seen her steeliness yesterday in a day of extraordinary pressures - fending off interrogation by select committee chairmen, urging the Saudi king to help aid get to Yemen, sacking her best political friend - ministers now wonder whether they'll still be in post after she's stuffed her famous Christmas goose.