Boris Johnson is in his bunker surrounded by the noisy Eurosceptic right – and the end is nigh

There was no attempt in this mini reshuffle to unite his party by bringing One Nation former Remainers on board

Boris Johnson’s mini reshuffle and Downing Street shake-up are not about ensuring the government focuses on “the people’s priorities”, as the No 10 script for ministers claims. The changes are all about the prime minister’s only priority at present – “Stayin’ Alive”. The Bee Gees’ number would have been a more appropriate song to joke about with Guto Harri, his new communications director, than “I Will Survive”.

Johnson wasn’t strong enough to sack either of the two men blamed for the Owen Paterson fiasco that sparked his dramatic downward spiral – Jacob Rees-Mogg and Mark Spencer were both shuffled into new jobs.

It seems he couldn’t risk provoking a single further letter calling for a vote of confidence in him. For those MPs who missed out on promotion, including the impatient band who entered parliament in 2019, Johnson signalled that a wide-ranging reshuffle could take place after the May local elections. His changes reveal that he is pandering to the noisy Eurosceptic right. There was no attempt to unite his party by bringing One Nation former Remainers on board.

In Johnson’s mind will be Lyndon B Johnson’s first rule of politics – to be able to count. As well as making the most threatening noises, the right is the largest organised group among the Tory backbenchers, even though many others are in the mainstream middle. The calculation will be that retaining the support of most on the right, and the payroll vote of ministers and their parliamentary private secretaries, will enable Johnson to survive a vote of confidence. When Theresa May did so in 2018, it is thought that only one member of the payroll vote opposed her.

Both friends and foes of Johnson tell me they believe he would likely win a confidence vote held now, so his critics would be wise to wait for another event to tip the scales against him – such as the conclusion of the inquiries being undertaken by the Metropolitan Police and Sue Gray into Partygate, or poor election results in May.

So Johnson hints he will veer to the right on policy, turn his back on nanny-state and green measures, and return to a traditional Tory agenda. But some ministers worry that, as he desperately tries to buy himself more time, he is raising great expectations, which he will struggle to deliver.

Rees-Mogg, now minister for “Brexit opportunities and government efficiency”, is bound to disappoint fellow Brexiteers hoping to see the UK become Singapore-on-Thames. That is not going to happen, with taxes already rising and demands on the NHS bound to increase.

The biggest threat to the Tories at the next general election will probably not be the cost-of-living crisis but NHS waiting lists; many Tory MPs think the government will need to go further and faster in reducing them than Sajid Javid proposed yesterday. Rees-Mogg, too, will have an uphill struggle: as the Commons Public Accounts Committee reports today, the only “Brexit opportunities” for business so far have been increased costs, paperwork, and border delays.

Johnson’s problem is that he can’t possibly keep all his MPs happy, because they have conflicting demands. He hinted to some that he would halt the national insurance rise due in April, but backtracked after a backlash from MPs worried about funding for the NHS and social care.

He nodded towards scrapping green levies on energy bills, but that worried MPs who want him to deliver his net zero pledge. Red wall MPs who want more investment and intervention for levelling up are counterbalanced by blue wall traditionalists in the south, whose voters think they will pay for it through higher taxes.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

Many Tory MPs seem underwhelmed by the No 10 shake-up. It was another sign of weakness that Johnson had to call up loyalists already in his team, such as MPs Steve Barclay, his new chief of staff, and Andrew Griffith, the new policy head. Harri’s favour to a Welsh-language website was a costly one – his comment that the PM was “not a complete clown” alarmed MPs, who wanted the changes to bring in grown-ups for serious times.

Johnson now looks like a leader who has surrounded himself with a loyal praetorian guard because he is resigned to facing a confidence vote. Before his disgraceful “Savile” smear against Keir Starmer, I was told his goal was to prevent the vote from happening by keeping the number of Tory MPs demanding one below the threshold of 54. Now his last-ditch strategy is to win the inevitable vote by keeping his opponents to below 180, the number needed to force him out.

The ground is shifting under Johnson’s feet, and his personnel changes look unlikely to stop it.