Ben Habib: It is in unionist interests for Boris Johnson to depart as prime minister

Any suggestion that a margin of one would have been adequate for the prime minister to declare victory disingenuously misrepresents the purpose of the vote.

Its purpose was not to select a winner in a binary, winner takes all, election.

Its purpose was to determine whether the prime minister can carry his parliamentary party in order to discharge government business.

Do his colleagues have sufficient confidence in him for him to get his business done?

With around an 80-seat majority, the Tories only needed 40 disaffected MPs to undermine government.

They have at least 148.

Diehard Johnson loyalists may refuse to accept he lost, but they do so to the detriment of the country.

Unless Johnson resigns soon, what we will experience is paralysis in the House of Commons and government.

Tory MPs are already planning a vote strike — their first target is any legislation brought forward by Johnson on the Northern Ireland Protocol.

It is now powerfully in the interests of unionists for Johnson to go.

Remember this is the man that swore there would be no border in the Irish Sea and then put one there.

In signing the protocol Johnson did not just break promises, he carried out an act of monumental constitutional self-harm.

He did not have to sign that document and having signed it, he had two and half years, supported by a thumping majority, to put things right.

He did nothing.

Now his majority is gone and his MPs are targeting any tabled ‘reforms’ to the protocol as a punishment beating for him.

These reforms were due to be published on June 6 but did not emerge.

Apparently, they are likely to be published next week.

Of course we know why they are late.

The prime minister fears the reception they will get.

If and when these draft reforms make it to the Commons you can be sure they will not genuinely put British citizens in Northern Ireland on an equal footing with those in Great Britain.

They will, as so many things Johnsonian, be announced with great fanfare subsequently to disappoint when the detail is analysed.

The sooner Johnson goes the better.

Only the Tories can fix the protocol but it must be under a new leader.

No one coming in now could be worse for Northern Ireland than Johnson.

Indeed, a new leader would have to make the province a priority.

As an aside, do not fret, Jeremy Hunt is not going to win the leadership.

There is simply nowhere near enough support within the Parliamentary Party to elect an arch Remainer.

It is team Boris that is putting about the bogeyman of Hunt.

There was no plot to get rid of Johnson.

This was not a Remain orchestrated coup.

Many Brexiteers voted against him.

Most backbenchers voted against him.

He is being shown the door because he failed.

The trigger may have been partygate but at the core of his failure was the repeated breaking of promises, including most importantly his betrayal of Northern Ireland.

The risk to the union of Northern Ireland and Great Britain was and remains Boris Johnson.

He must go.

• Ben Habib is a former Brexit Party MEP and one of the signatories to a court challenge against the NI Protocol