Boris Johnson needs to be bold: business-as-usual will not save his premiership. But, as I said in the Times yesterday, never has it been more difficult for him to get anything significant done.
The first reason is that Johnson must operate knowing that another confidence vote is a near certainty. The rebels need only 32 more votes to oust him and so Johnson must tread carefully. He can’t afford to lose the support of any more MPs. This acts as a check on radicalism.
Boris Johnson will need to be able to show Tory MPs that things have improved, that changes are happening.
The second is that when a system thinks a PM might not be around that much longer, everything slows down. As one of those in the engine room of government laments: ‘When it starts to rain, the snails and the slugs come out. When there’s talk of defenestration, the system becomes gummed up.’
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