Hello, I'm Natasha Faroze and this is Spectator Out Loud where three authors from the magazine read their articles this week.

First up, we've got Kate Andrews on why Rishishishinak quit.

Then, Sean Thomas, on his encounter with Russian emigres in Armenia. And finally, Toby

Young's piece on his admiration for the other Toby Young. First, Kay Andrews. On Tuesday, the last

cabinet meeting with Sajadavid as health secretary and Rishi Sunaq as chancellor passed without any

hint that either was about to resign.

The ministers did not coordinate their resignations, but they had both been tipped over the edge

by growing evidence that No. 10 had misled MPs by declaring Boris Johnson had no prior

knowledge of Chris Pinchers' behavior. Sunak had also grown tired of the Prime Minister's

economic cacism, the fantasy of wanting

both high spending and low taxes. The contradictions have become untenable. In that cabinet meeting,

Johnson offered more cake. He was his usual a bullion self, promising a morale-raising speech

to move on from recent woes. It was Michael Gove who confronted him.

Now was the time for candor, he said, not misleading boosterism. Tackling inflation would be very

painful, so there's no sense in pretending otherwise. And didn't part of the problem rest around

the cabinet table? Fiscal nimbism, he called it. Ministers claim to love low taxes,

but when spending cuts are suggested to make a low tax economy possible, they all say,

not in my department. In Sunak's resignation letter in which he noted his, quote, fundamentally

different and, quote, economic approach to the prime minister, he made it clear that he agrees

with Gove. Quote, our people know that if something is too good to be true, he wrote, then it's not true,

end quote. The highest spending in decades had been coupled with the highest tax burden in living

memory. Soon that could no longer pretend otherwise. The prospect of a joint speech with the

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