When Liz Truss entered Number 10, she had very limited political capital. She had been the first choice of fewer than 50 MPs, had exiled many big beasts to the backbenches and had inherited a parliamentary party with grave doubts about her abilities and her project. Rishi Sunak has a far healthier inheritance. Not only is the economic picture beginning to improve with lower gas prices and a stabilising pound, but he has broad goodwill from all but the most hardcore wings of his party. Even those he sacked from government mostly understand that their previous criticisms of him – or their decisions not to back him in the leadership contest – mean there is obviously no room at the inn. Sunak has decided to take the opposite approach to Truss and has attempted to build a broad coalition in his cabinet and junior ministerial ranks. He has retained ministers such as James Cleverly, Thérèse Coffey and Nadhim Zahawi, who were loyal to Truss but also potentially less inclined to object to the handbrake turn on her economic plans. Is this a sign of strength or weakness? There are advantages to bringing your critics into government when you need to make difficult decisions and could do without them carping from the backbenches. In his reshuffle, Sunak appointed people who were previously regular talking heads in the media on almost every issue where there was potential controversy. Though not of his choosing, Jeremy Hunt is now in the Treasury and therefore will not be opining on the NHS winter crisis, the extraordinary backlogs or the pile-ups of ambulances outside A&E departments. He had campaigned for a major workforce plan for the health service, now at the helm of the exchequer, he will have to look at the books and see if he is really prepared to fund one. Suella Braverman is back as home secretary, which will cool the tempers of some of the party’s right, though she looks like an accident waiting to happen and has cost Sunak some capital on his political judgment. Mel Stride, a close ally of Sunak who had been his outrider under Truss, is now the work and pensions secretary without the platform of chairing the Treasury select committee. He had made clear his support for benefits rising in line with inflation – but now in the department, he will have to make that case from the inside or swallow if it goes a different way. Andrew Mitchell, who took on Sunak over international aid and lost a vote on the 0.7% target because of the then-chancellor’s promise to restore the target when allowed, has also joined the cabinet with the development brief. His powerful overtures will now need to be in private. Mark Harper, one of the fiercest voices on government propriety, has also been rewarded for his dogged campaigning with a cabinet job at transport. Gove is back at levelling up, having used his six-week sabbatical from government to comprehensively demolish Truss. And the junior ministerial ranks are also being filled with powerful voices from the backbenches. Robert Halfon, one of the Tories most articulate voices on working-class Conservatism and education, has been made an education minister which he first performed under David Cameron. Also restored to that department is Nick Gibb, who was a long-serving minister there as well. Just yesterday at PMQs, Helen Whately complained about “gridlock” in the NHS, despite being a former health minister. Less than 24 hours later, she is back in the department. And one of Sunak’s potentially most fearsome critics, both on the economy and on Brexit, is staying at the Northern Ireland Office – Steve Baker. The downside of this strategy is that Sunak is unlikely now to have a pliant, nodding dog cabinet and frontbench – which was very much the strategy of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Johnson told his aides that in his cabinet he wanted “tired old lions, so I can be king lion!” Ultimately, Sunak has managed to make a virtue of not being quite strong enough to have the exact cabinet of his choosing. In a different world, where there was no pressing economic crisis and he had decisively won an election or leadership contest, he would probably have chosen some roles differently, especially his chancellor. The exact shape of the new power struggles are yet to emerge – whether it is tax rises, migration, benefits, pensions or net zero. But one side-effect of his reshuffle is that there are now some plum roles – and big platforms – available on the Treasury, health and education select committees and already Matt Hancock and Kit Malthouse are reportedly eyeing up the jobs. Sunak has played the hand he was dealt better than Truss – but there are still plenty of critics left to make life difficult and some of them could well be in his own cabinet.