Liz Truss has started to appoint supporters of her leadership campaign rivals to ministerial positions, answering the demand (mostly from said supporters of her leadership campaign rivals) to ‘reach out’ across the party to bring the Conservatives back together. There are Rishi Sunak backers in the latest slew of jobs – Robert Jenrick returns to government as health minister, Jeremy Quin goes to the Home Office, Mark Spencer to Defra and Victoria Prentis goes to DWP – along with two who had previously backed Kemi Badenoch (Rachel Maclean goes to Justice and Julia Lopez goes to DCMS). In the interests of fairness and equality, there are a few Truss backers in there too, such as Jackie Doyle-Price and Conor Burns – though I suspect the latter will be disappointed to be moved sideways to the International Trade department. Burns spent much of the summer putting in much legwork setting up meetings designed to resolve the stand-off over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

There are a lot of sore Tories around at the moment. Many of them have chosen to focus on the top jobs all going to not only Truss’s backers but Truss’s pals, muttering variously that she’s ‘preparing to hit the ground’ and that she’s ‘already started our two-year-long decline’. There is a lot of talk today about Tories in marginal seats starting to contact headhunters as they anticipate losing their seats in the next election.

Now, a lot of this is the sort of emotional outpouring you get after one side has lost a leadership contest and it is aggravated by the fact Truss didn’t win by as big and emphatic a margin as had been expected. What then tends to happen for the losing side is that the noisiest figures go off to the backbenches and have a period of silence and reflection (often, if Labour’s anti-Corbynites are anything to go by, growing a beard of grief) before working out when the most likely moment of vulnerability is for the victor and seizing on that.

Rishi Sunak has already given two parliamentary speeches, and the Commons has only been back for three days, so clearly less silence and more vocal reflection from him. A number of his supporters who were sacked from the government have said they plan to be ‘strong and independent voices’ on the backbenches, which suggests not much silence from them either. Clearly they currently think the point of vulnerability isn’t far off.

The following MPs have been appointed to junior ministerial roles:

• The Rt Hon Jesse Norman MP as a Minister of State in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office;
• Leo Docherty MP as a Minister of State in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office;
• Tom Pursglove MP as a Minister of State in the Home Office;
• Jeremy Quin MP as a Minister of State in the Home Office;
• Jackie Doyle-Price MP as a Minister of State in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy;
• The Rt Hon Conor Burns MP as a Minister of State in the Department for International Trade;
• The Rt Hon Mark Spencer MP as a Minister of State in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP as a Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care;
• Rachel Maclean MP as a Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice;
• Victoria Prentis MP as a Minister of State in the Department for Work and Pensions;
• Julia Lopez MP as a Minister of State in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport;
• Michael Tomlinson MP as Solicitor General.
• Paul Scully MP has been re-appointed as a Minister of State (Minister for London) in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.