What Boris Johnson can do to save his premiership

After the confidence vote, the ball is in the prime minister’s court says Sean O’Grady

Boris Johnson, pictured at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, could reshuffle his ministers (AP)

Without making light of the real-world problems of hunger and poverty that disfigure our society, we are about to enter a fascinating political experiment.

We are going to discover exactly how much power a prime minister with a majority of 80 can wield without the trust of their colleagues.

Although not a homogenous group, and far from an organised faction like the European Research Group that caused so much trouble during Brexit, the present-day rebels will be awkward. They can obstruct legislation, publicly criticise him, refuse to back him when needed and refuse to defend the increasingly indefensible on the airwaves. Just as confidence is ebbing away from Boris Johnson, so is his authority.

Still, Boris Johnson is not entirely powerless, and the curiously neglected question is not so much what his rebels do now but what he can do to leverage the advantages of incumbency. After the confidence vote, the ball is in his court.

First, he can reshuffle his cabinet and rebalance his government. One of the few topics that seem to unite Conservative Party members is that they think the current cabinet is second-rate. Johnson has been slow to reshuffle ministers compared to many of his predecessors, but this might be a moment for change and ministerial resignations would add to the possibilities of remaking the administration.

So a radical refresh might rejuvenate the government and give the impression that Johnson is prepared to do something about his tired, aimless government. An advantage of this would be that he can promote talent that has come through recently, people who are hungry to make their mark and get on. He can also dump some of the more obvious liabilities. On the negative side, some of the worst public performers, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries, Priti Patel and Oliver Dowden, are also the most slavishly loyal to him because they know that their political careers are tied to his and they will not enjoy any of the lucrative opportunities open to ex-prime ministers. In due course, he may need all the support he can get in the cabinet.

Second, Johnson can make and unmake laws. If he was prudent, he would quietly abandon some of his more divisive moves such as privatising Channel 4 and destabilising the BBC – measures that weren’t even in the manifesto. If he wanted to rationalise policy more fully,  he’d downgrade the Rwanda plan to a limited pilot scheme and ditch the threat to unilaterally scrap the Northern Ireland protocol which risks a trade war with the European Union and is already blighting business investment.

Mr Johnson could also add some much-needed substance to slogans such as “levelling up”; and fix the more prosaic problems with travel, the passport office, GP appointments and the general shortage of labour. Voters might prove more understanding about relaxing the points system to allow more professional, unskilled or semi-skilled migration if it helped to find workers to drive lorries or treat patients.

Above all, the prime minister could move from sloganeering to vision. One of the most embarrassing early signs of his decline was the speech to the CBI in South Shields last November. Flagged as a landmark address that would define “levelling up,” it was instead a rambling speech where he lost his place and started filling uncomfortable silences with stories about Peppa Pig. He might usefully now add some meaning to his favourite catchphrases, albeit without much public funding to back them up.

Mr Johnson needs to answer the question: “What is this government for?” With a clearer plan of how to defeat inflation and boost living standards, Partygate and the leadership crisis might not have proved so lethal to his career.