With a slump in the polls, Boris Johnson has no choice but to take brewing discontent with his leadership seriously

Editorial: There is already chatter on the Westminster grapevine about Tory MPs signing letters saying they have no confidence in the prime minister as party leader

Normally, a prime minister who had delivered a big election victory only nine months earlier would expect a warm reception from his party’s backbenchers when parliament returns from its summer break.

However, Boris Johnson knows the greeting he will get when the Commons resumes on Tuesday will be the very opposite of that. Conservative MPs are appalled at the sight of a rudderless government stumbling from one crisis to the next. A team that once promised to “take back control” is not in control of events. Backbenchers are understandably fed up with defending the party line in public, only to find the policy changes soon afterwards as a panic-stricken Downing Street pulls the rug from under another cabinet minister.

It is true the coronavirus crisis would have been an unprecedented challenge for any administration, and that decisions taken amid evolving scientific and medical advice inevitably require fine-tuning. Yet that does not explain a dozen U-turns since the pandemic began. A Vote Leave team which was very good at delivering simple messages in the 2016 referendum and 2019 election has been surprisingly poor at translating such skills into government. After so many mixed messages since the success of “stay at home”, it is little wonder there is public confusion about the constantly changing rules.

The government has been the architect of much of its own misfortune, as the fiasco over A-level and GCSE exam grades showed. It is no surprise that, after Sir Keir Starmer’s justified attacks on the regime’s “incompetence”, Labour has drawn level with the Tories in a new opinion poll, and that other surveys suggest the public would prefer Sir Keir to Mr Johnson as prime minister.

Even loyalists such as Sir Charles Walker, vice chair of the 1922 Committee, are issuing unusually direct public warnings to Mr Johnson. As Sir Charles rightly put it: “Too often it looks like this government licks its finger and sticks it in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. This is not a sustainable way to approach the business of governing and government.”

It is painfully obvious that the current cabinet, with a few exceptions such as Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove, is a C team composed of Brexiteers and Johnson loyalists, one of the weakest in recent times. It leaves the impression that Mr Johnson does not want to be outshone by any rising stars, but carries a very high price which is now on display.

Team Johnson’s ability to scapegoat senior civil servants and bodies such as Ofqual and Public Health England will not be tolerated much longer. Voters will notice that ministers always find somebody else to take responsibility for their mistakes.

The only way to end the drift is to remake the cabinet on merit rather than ideological purity or subservience.

Mr Johnson and his close advisers have so far treated Tory backbenchers with lofty disdain. Even with a Commons majority of 80, they cannot afford to do so. In what is bound to be a difficult winter dominated by coronavirus, the government will need all the willing foot soldiers it can muster, not the demoralised army who will return to parliament this week. There is already the first chatter on the Westminster grapevine about Tory MPs signing letters saying they have no confidence in Mr Johnson as party leader, in a rerun of the rebellion which destabilised Theresa May.

Of course, it is premature to talk about another leadership crisis; with an election unlikely before 2024, Mr Johnson has plenty of time to turn the tide. But he should take the warning signs seriously and break out of the current malaise by displaying decisive, competent government. He should remember that his party is ruthless at deposing poorly performing leaders when an election looms. An oven-ready replacement in Mr Sunak would offer an attractive alternative for many Tory MPs.

It is in Mr Johnson’s own interests – and, more importantly, the country’s – that he gets a grip, and fast.