Boris Johnson’s fightback has been cut short

Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the defence select committee, has this morning announced that he is sending a letter to the 1922 chairman calling for a no confidence vote in Boris Johnson. In a way this is not a surprise: Johnson cut Ellwood from the government when he became Prime Minister and the two are temperamentally very different. But the worry for No. 10 is that there are rather a lot of former ministers on the backbenches these days, and if a lot of them start writing letters then a no confidence vote will become a near certainty.

Another concern for No. 10 this morning is whether they can live up to the expectations set in terms of the government’s change of direction and personnel. In private meetings, Johnson indicated that he had sympathy with those Tory MPs who wanted April’s National Insurance rise scrapped. But he then reaffirmed it on Sunday, and this has caused significant anger.