‘Tumultuous’ is an often-overused word in politics but there is no doubt that the events that began unfolding in Westminster yesterday evening are just that.

After literally years of slipping and sliding on political thin ice, batting off every challenge, endless apologising, and seemingly utterly impervious to the torrent of negative comment he attracts, Boris Johnson is facing possibly the biggest crisis of his career as senior and junior ministers and parliamentary private secretaries, queued up to resign their positions. Such was the excitement surrounding the departures that some found it worth reporting that the Housing Minister, Michael Gove, was holding on amid the Cabinet exits.

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it could be said that to lose one senior minister is unfortunate; to lose two looks like carelessness. Sunak and Javid have clearly had enough and will, with others, most likely now be biding their time, waiting in the wings for Johnson to depart. He is highly unlikely to go of his own volition given that he always seems to follow the example of his chosen inspirational predecessor, Winston Churchill,  whose mantra for holding on in a crisis was, ‘KBO’ (Keep Bu**ering On).

Such an implosion is a rare thing to witness and of course all the talk is now of just how long Johnson can keep bailing as the ship sinks under him. Surely he is damaged beyond saving, and with public anger over Partygate still hot, he has become a liability to every sitting Conservative MP who wants to stand any chance of returning to Westminster after the next election.

Their concerns will not have been eased in the slightest by the results of a snap YouGov poll last night that showed most Tory voters and a massive two-thirds of Britons say Johnson should resign as Prime Minister. Yet he seemingly still finds favour with many people and he has wriggled out of near-certain disaster on more than a few occasions. It won’t be a surprise if he does it again.

The question our readers will have an interest in is, in this period of extraordinary political uncertainty, what will happen to the housing market – which is already under pressure from the rising cost of living and of borrowing.

Traditionally, major uncertainties have brought the property market to a near standstill but events during and shortly after lockdown shows that past behaviour is no guarantee of future behaviour. Faced with the most dangerous and unpredictable pandemic in over 100 years, buyers and sellers took the bribe of the stamp duty holiday and spent, spent spent.

Now, even without Johnson’s woes bearing on it, the market is entering a state of correction, but will the current crisis cause a major stall in activity?

Someone with a strong opinion on almost any subject is our own contributor, Russell Quirk, so we asked him for his views of the tumultuous events:

“I’m torn. On the one hand the likely demise of Boris Johnson in what seems to be his long awaited night of the long knives, is a positive thing for us housing folk in that it may rid of us a Johnsonian agenda that includes bashing landlords relentlessly and has allowed Michael Gove free reign to spout nonsensical rubbish around misguided planning reform and the empowerment of NIMBYS in the planning process.

“This shambles of a government has not been on our side.

“Whilst good riddance to bad rubbish certainly applies to a broken administration that continues to embarrass itself, the problem is that whomever is next to take the throne is an unknown in respect of their housing credentials.

“My money is on Rishi Sunak as our next Prime Minister and Sajid Javid as Chancellor, this on the basis that Bo Jo cannot survive now.

“But whilst Sunak and Javid appear to be tax cutters and the former propped up the housing market with a stamp duty respite that added gunpowder to warm house prices, we really don’t know what they will do in policy terms if placed in the two highest offices of the land.

“No one likes uncertainty, least not markets and so we’re in for a bumpy few months I suspect. However, what we do know of UK property is that it seems to be able to resist the adversity of Brexit, Covid and rising inflation and interest rates.

“And so perhaps as Boris’s cabinet colleagues are now doing, the housing market will simply raise two fingers and carry on regardless.

“Anything has to be better than the broken politics of the last two years, surely?”