Cameron didn’t enjoy this reshuffle. But he needed it

David Cameron has always nurtured a deep dislike of reshuffles, and the last week won’t have helped. The result might strengthen the government; but the process was as ghastly as the Prime Minister expected. He sought to be gentlemanly about things, publicising the promoted while granting the demoted privacy. Even so, I understand, three ministers burst into tears in front of him when he was delivering the bad news. Lady Warsi was so cross about being stripped of the party chairmanship that she went home to Yorkshire and carried on negotiations from there.

Some ministers even succeeded in staying put when the Prime Minister would have liked them to move. On Monday afternoon, he asked Iain Duncan Smith to consider switching jobs. His work on welfare reform was done, IDS was told, and his views on rehabilitation could be put to good use in the Justice Department; though as a former leader, he was assured, the choice was his. In another era, a gentle suggestion from a Tory Prime Minister would have carried the status of a Papal Bull. Duncan Smith, however, took some time to consider and then informed Cameron’s chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, that he’d stay put. Then the Prime Minister phoned up, asking if it would make a difference if he expressed a preference for a shift to Justice. The answer was no.

But looking at the rest of the reshuffle, it is clear that Cameron now has more chance of governing successfully. Over the summer, his confidants say, he realised that he could be a one-term PM. This has created a much-needed sense of urgency in Downing Street. if changes aren’t made, ‘there’s a real prospect that this country could sink’, one No. 10 aide told me.