When will Theresa May be strong enough to shuffle her ministerial pack?

Theresa May should go on holiday more often, I say in The Sun today. For her Italian break has coincided with a pause in the Tory plotting that has been rumbling on since the election.

Now, this is partly logistical: it is much harder to scheme when parliament isn’t sitting. But it also reflects how Tory opinion is hardening against a leadership contest.

At the same time, the government has begun to behave more like a government—setting the news agenda in the last week or so in a way it simply wasn’t straight after the election. This has been combined with a much more aggressive CCHQ-led campaign against Labour for its various spending commitments. Together, this has ended the post-election sense that Labour is the party with all the momentum.

One test of this May revival is whether she feels strong enough to do a reshuffle in the New Year. There were few greater signs of her post-election impotence than how nearly all of the Cabinet were reappointed after the election.