The coup on the intelligence committee shows Boris Johnson has forfeited his party’s loyalty

The much-vaunted ‘Russia report’ is a distraction. The real significance of yesterday’s coup is that it illustrated the limits of Johnson’s power, explains John Rentoul

Julian Lewis was elected chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee in a coup to keep Boris Johnson’s favoured appointee, Chris Grayling, out of the job (PA)

It was the stuff of a good spy thriller. Or possibly a comedy spy caper. An arrogant prime minister tried to fix the election of the chair of the committee overseeing the security services by installing a trusted former minister, only for his intelligence to fail him and a maverick Conservative MP to take over, with Labour support, instead.

The election of Julian Lewis as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee yesterday in place of Boris Johnson’s candidate, Chris Grayling, the former justice secretary, was a perfectly executed ambush.

I understand that Kevan Jones, a Labour member of the committee who is also shadow minister for the armed forces, was the organising genius behind the operation. If so, he has lost none of the skills that he learned in the Northern Region of the GMB union, which was the training ground for many of the Labour Party’s most accomplished operators, including Nick Brown, the party’s chief whip.