Anne McElvoy Boris makes more band changes than Spinal Tap – let's see how this plays

GUESS who's back, back again? Meet the old friends-of-Boris with updated nameplates on the office door. The Prime Minister has the kind of default mode that some chaps have in calling up old girlfriends and he deploys the same chat-up line, invariably starting the conversation with, “It's time to get the band back together again.” Some, like his campaign strategist Sir Lynton Crosby, made clear they had moved on to other relationships (while being around for emotional crises and guest roles come the next election perhaps.

- Anne McElvoy

But however tainted the stardust, the Johnson jukebox has enough fans to regroup, even after the latest slew of resignations. “Mad but irresistible" was, I gather, the response of Guto Harri his new (AKA old City Hall) communications guru – to the offer to take over the fast-turnover role of communications chief.

Because extroverts attract one another, Harri – after getting banned from GB News for gesture politics which made both the network and the knee-taker look absurd - has himself arrived trailing fresh excitements: a chirpy chat with a Welsh-language website, which reported him discussing the jovial tone of his appointment.

There are some awkward trailing wires from a PR role lobbying for Huawei, a company once attractive to the Government as the cutting edge of China business relations - and then suddenly out on the cold in the great freeze on dangerous China tech.