Why was this man a government minister for 3 years without being elected?

As Rishi Sunak well knows, a ministerial resignation can be extremely damaging for a prime minister.

It was Sunak’s resignation as chancellor a year ago, after all, which marked the beginning of the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership.

The tables turned however, as Lord (Zac) Goldsmith resigned in anger from Sunak’s government. While Lord Goldsmith attacked Sunak for apparently lacking interest in green issues, it is understood he actually quit after being told to apologise having been accused of being part of a campaign to undermine the inquiry into Johnson’s conduct as PM.

It’s unlikely Sunak will be losing sleep over this particular departure.

For a start, Lord Goldsmith is a staunch ally of Johnson, has been withering in his criticism of Sunak in the past and had a very junior role as a Foreign Office minister.

Plus, he’s not even an MP.

Watch: Lord Goldsmith resigns from government

He used to be an MP, but lost his seat in the 2019 general election, when Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney defeated him by 34,559 votes to 26,793 in the Richmond Park constituency.

In that case, how did Lord Goldsmith get to be a member of the government in the first place?

It’s because Lord Goldsmith is a peer drawn from the House of Lords. And while we think of governments as being made up of elected MPs, a quirk of the UK’s system means unelected peers like Lord Goldsmith are also allowed to be government ministers.

But Lord Goldsmith’s appointment in particular was extraordinary. It was in the early hours of 13 December, 2019 when it was confirmed Goldsmith - as he was then simply known - lost his Richmond Park seat.

Six days later, his friend - one Boris Johnson - appointed him a life peer: thus allowing him to keep his role as environment minister that he had been given while still an MP earlier that year.

A past tweet from Lord Goldsmith soon resurfaced in which he had said about peers in 2012: “Seedy lists of party apparatchiks appointed by power hungry party leaders and insulated from any democratic pressure for 15 years? No thanks.”

His appointment sparked outrage. Labour’s then-shadow culture minister Jon Trickett said: “It says everything you need to know about Boris Johnson’s respect for democracy that he has ignored the voters of Richmond Park and appointed Goldsmith to government. The public deserve better than a government appointed by ‘jobs for mates’.”

Read more: The four by-elections facing Rishi Sunak as another Tory MP resigns

In the years up until his resignation on Friday, Lord Goldsmith had held four further junior ministerial roles.

But this is nothing new. On the day Johnson appointed him in 2019, Baroness (Nicky) Morgan even got to keep her senior cabinet position as culture secretary, despite not having even stood in the election - though she stepped down two months later.

And Sunak’s government remains filled with peers. By Yahoo News UK’s count on Friday, of the 107 ministerial positions in 24 government departments, 25 are currently occupied by unelected peers.