Owen Paterson has announced his resignation as MP for North Shropshire, after Boris Johnson made clear he would no longer seek to prevent the former cabinet minister from being punished by parliament for lobbying. Yesterday Johnson ordered his MPs to vote down a report saying Paterson should be suspended from the Commons for 30 days. But less then 24 hours later, in one of the swiftest and most comprehensive government U-turns in recent times, No 10 announced that it was going to effectively tear up yesterday’s vote, allow a fresh debate on suspending Paterson and start again from scratch in attempting to gain cross-party support for reform of the disciplinary process for MPs. There is a Westminster joke about how eventually everyone gets let down by Boris Johnson, and the U-turn meant that Paterson - who yesterday enjoyed the full support of the No 10 machine - was today facing inevitable suspension from the Commons, and a possible recall election too. (See 4.31pm.) Paterson, who only last night was saying that he was looking forward to clearing his name and was calling for the resignation of the parliamentary commissioner for standards (see 11.11am), responded to the PM cutting him adrift by announcing that he was resigning as an MP. In a statement Paterson said he was doing so to put his family first. (See 2.45pm.) Johnson’s U-turn makes the government less vulnerable to the toxic charge of corruption and cronyism than it was, but the episode must have caused some reputational damage and Tory MPs who loyally defended what the government was doing yesterday are looking particularly exposed. It also remains unclear whether reform of the standards system will ever happen. Labour has not entirely ruled out joining a cross-party initiative in this area, but ministers’ main demand is to insert an appeal process into the current system - and Sir Keir Starmer argues this is unnecessary. (See 3.38pm.) Claudia Webbe, who was elected as a Labour MP, has been sentenced to 10 weeks in custody suspended for two years after being found guilty of a campaign of harassment, including threatening an acid attack, against a woman. Lord Evans, the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, has launched a full-frontal attack on the government’s decision to tear up the independent system for combating sleaze in parliament, describing it as “a very serious and damaging moment for parliament and public standards in this country”. Boris Johnson has been accused of “staggering hypocrisy” after it emerged that he flew back to London from the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow by private jet to go to a dinner at a men-only private members’ club. Johnson has admitted receiving a free holiday at a luxurious Spanish villa linked to Zac Goldsmith, the former MP who was given a peerage and job by the prime minister.