Boris’s bunker: the PM’s defensive strategy

When Boris Johnson first became Prime Minister, he did not have a majority in parliament. Still, he didn’t worry too much about making friends with Tory MPs. He decided to work from the outside in, using his public popularity to pressure colleagues. A snap election was looming: backing him, he said, was their best hope of surviving. He was right, and delivered a majority of 80. This gave him huge personal authority. MPs deferred to his judgment even when they disagreed.

How different things look now. Johnson finds himself pleading with his MPs not to pull the plug on his premiership in what seems like a daily struggle. ‘He’s now a prisoner of the parliamentary party,’ says one minister. They make demands; he attempts to appease them. Everything — from staff changes at No. 10 to the makeup of the whips’ office — is designed to show that he is listening to backbenchers.