Theresa May cabinet: All senior Tory ministers to remain in jobs after shock election result

Reshuffle proper is expected to get underway on Saturday

Theresa May's much-anticipated reshuffle started with a whimper as she revealed all of the senior members in her Cabinet would remain in their jobs.

Downing Street released a statement on Friday afternoon announcing Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, and Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, were remaining in post.

Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, will also keep their jobs.

The announcement comes as the Prime Minister begins to make arrangements for a new Government in the wake of the shock general election result.

Speculation mounted in the weeks before polling day that Mr Hammond would be vulnerable if the Prime Minister had been returned with an increased majority.

The reshuffle proper is expected to get underway on Saturday, with Andrea Leadsom, the Environment Secretary, and Liz Truss, the Justice Secretary, rumoured to be most at risk.

Ms May will first have to deal with the eight ministers who were culled from the Government's front benches.

Among them was Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer, the author of the Conservatives' widely criticised manifesto.

Financial secretary to the Treasury Jane Ellison lost her seat in Battersea while Tory housing minister Gavin Barwell - author of a book titled 'How to Win a Marginal Seat' - crashed out in Croydon Central.

Charities minister Rob Wilson and health minister Nicola Blackwood also lost to Labour in a bruising night for the governing party.

Another senior Tory whose future is said now to be uncertain is Ms May herself. The Prime Minister was humiliated in the general election, losing 12 seats rather than boosting her mandate, and the attention soon turned to who could replace her.

She has vowed to remain as leader of the party - and the country - but Heidi Allen became the first Conservative MP to say publicly she believed the Prime Minister would be gone in the next six months.

The South Cambridgeshire MP said her premiership may now be a "period of transition" as the country negotiates Brexit.