How will Boris Johnson govern his unruly cabinet?

Can Boris Johnson fix his fractured cabinet? According to reports, only four of his cabinet colleagues backed any of the three options for new anti-Omicron measures the prime minister presented to them during their unusually long (more than two hours) and disharmonious session.

Those who sided with the prime minister were a small minority: Sajid Javid, naturally, as well as Michael Gove, who has long erred on the side of public health, Nadine Dorries, who is ultra-loyal to Johnson, and Simon Clarke, chief secretary to the Treasury. Those who spoke out against included the chancellor, Rishi Sunak; the foreign secretary, Liz Truss; Grant Shapps, at transport; Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary; Nadhim Zahawi, education secretary; and Alister Jack, Scottish secretary.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the House of Commons who attends cabinet, even argued with Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, there to back the prime minister, about the validity of Sage modelling. Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, had effectively given their cue by quitting last Saturday night over “coercive” Covid measures. It was, in effect, a cabinet revolt on a central aspect of policy – a very rare thing in the British system.

The first thing any prime minister needs to get his policies through cabinet is authority, and recent events have seen Johnson’s authority seep away. Policy disappointments such as tax hikes and social care, HS2 and Brexit have been compounded by sleaze, the loss of the North Shropshire by-election, partygate, the surprisingly large revolt by Tory backbenchers over plan B, and Frost quitting.

Johnson is simply unable, in his weakened state, to threaten, bribe, cajole or jostle his colleagues into line because many of them think he’ll be gone before long. Without the backing of key players such as the chancellor and the foreign secretary, but rather their active opposition, no prime minister can get his way. He is their prisoner, and that is not sustainable.

The second thing a weakened prime minister needs is the right advice, as well as base cunning, to help him survive. Ideally, Johnson would have been able to “fix” the bigger cabinet beasts in order to influence the others and allow him to steer cabinet in the right direction and sum up the decision as he wishes. If that is not possible – and that should be apparent well in advance – then the best thing is to dodge trouble and postpone the decision to avoid a defeat.

His team in Downing Street, the whips office and at party HQ ought to able to spin, to gather intelligence and exert pressure in the right places to secure the right result for their PM. The consensus seems to be that the government and party machinery is not serving Johnson well – though he has to take the blame for appointing the wrong people and being as steady as a wonky shopping trolley in a crisis, as Dominic Cummings claims.

In any case, cabinet ministers should be more frightened of being sacked by a PM than a PM is frightened of being deposed by them. When that balance of power tips, then authority evaporates, people start to look to the future, and a premiership is over. It happened to Margaret Thatcher in 1990 when most of her cabinet told her one by one that she was going to lose the leadership challenge against her. It happened to John Major during his entire premiership, though he somehow survived. It was also the fate of Tony Blair in 2007 when ministers started to resign at the behest of Gordon Brown. It also befell Theresa May in 2019 when she too started to lose the confidence of colleagues, and a succession of them quit – notably her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.

The only thing that can be said for what Johnson did in almost inviting a humiliation at cabinet is that if things go as badly wrong as the experts predict, then the likes of Truss and Sunak will look callous and get the blame, not him. However, if the bodies really do pile up, then the whole government, and indeed the Conservative Party, will get the blame, with severe political repercussions.

Less dramatically than that, the trends in hospitalisations and deaths will become clearer in the coming days, and the “incontrovertible evidence” Truss demands will materialise, albeit too late to prevent unnecessary sickness and deaths that might have been avoided if they’d followed Johnson and Javid. In such circumstances, even Johnson’s most ambitious rivals will be obliged to follow his lead and introduce new restrictions, and it is their judgement that will have seen to be wanting in the face of such a crisis.

Politically, Sunak and Truss are clearly following the sceptical climate of opinion within the Conservative Party, and they will be popular in the coming days. But what if Sunak and Truss U-turn this time next week? They would not then be popular with the large group of Tory MPs who oppose any new restrictions on libertarian or economic grounds, no matter what is happening in the wards. Yet if they remain opposed to new restrictions, then the death toll will eventually rise to such a point that the government they seek to lead will become the most unpopular in history.

The problem for all the prospective Tory leaders is that the centre of gravity of opinion within the party is going to be far distant from the bulk of public opinion. If Johnson remains closer to the electorate than his rivals, then, even with all the scandals surrounding him, he might survive, get the better of his rivals and restore his authority. It is a long shot, though, and his future is no longer in his hands.

There is one last possibility. It is possible that if Johnson believes his cabinet and most of his party will never back him on the pandemic then he might resign rather than “see the bodies pile high”, as he once put it. It would be a surprisingly honourable way out, and perhaps a convenient one for a man who must know his premiership is doomed, is bored by aspects of it, and would like to be richer. Better to jump than be pushed, surely?