What to expect from the first 100 days of Boris Johnson’s new government

On Monday we can expect a minor cabinet reshuffle, with a bigger one after the UK leaves the EU at the end of January. Someone in Boris Johnson’s office also told ITV’s Paul Brand that the EU withdrawal bill will restart its parliamentary progress next Friday, and that there will be a budget in March.

The first 100 days of the new majority government has already been planned in some detail – which suggests that even if the victorious prime minister is a bit slapdash with the paperwork, he has surrounded himself with efficient administrators who were busy during the election planning ahead without worrying about tempting fate.

The briefing of a double reshuffle is interesting: it suggests Johnson wants to keep the axe in the air the better to enforce parliamentary and cabinet discipline in the run-up to Brexit day.

Not that we should expect any reluctance on the Conservative Party’s part to get the withdrawal bill through its parliamentary stages in short order – albeit not as short as the three days that were proposed long, long ago when leaving on 31 October still seemed possible.

With a big majority, the trench warfare of the last session suddenly becomes a historical curiosity, to be studied for the next time there is a hung parliament. The norm in constitutional history is for majority governments to get their business through. And even if there are attempts by a demoralised and divided opposition to try to disrupt the bill’s progress, Lindsay Hoyle, the new speaker, is less likely to tolerate them than his predecessor might have been.

In any case, John Bercow always insisted he was only trying to allow the will of the majority in the Commons to express itself. Now that there is a clear majority for it, we will leave the EU on 31 January. It’s a Friday, so Saturday 1 February will be the first day of the new era.

This has been anticipated for so long that there is a danger of underplaying the significance of the moment. Nothing material will change that weekend, because we will go into a transition period during which we will be treated as an EU member, but we will be out.

Getting back in is a very different proposition from “stop Brexit”. Politics will turn in an instant. Of course, there will be argument, and possibly a few news stories, about the trade negotiations that no one believes will really be completed by next December. But the fact of Brexit will change everything. Too late, Jeremy Corbyn will even be able to say what he thinks.

The plan for Johnson’s first 100 days, therefore, is to make the transition from Brexit to his One Nation programme. Having won Blyth and Workington and West Bromwich East, Johnson intends to govern for those places. That means using the first 100 days to convince them that he is making a start on improving the NHS, schools and policing.

Expect the next 100 days to feel a bit like the first 100 days of a possible election campaign for 2024.