Queens of the jungle: Boris promotes Liz Truss to Foreign and Nadine Dorries to ...

Boris Johnson stamped his authority on the Cabinet yesterday with a brutal reshuffle designed to secure him a second term in power.

In a two-hour cull, he sacked four top ministers and handed a humiliating demotion to Dominic Raab.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick and Tory party chairman Amanda Milling were all sent to the back benches.

Miss Milling's successor Oliver Dowden last night told activists to start preparing for an election possibly only two years off.

The removal of Mr Williamson follows a chorus of criticism over last year's exams fiasco, which saw him lose the confidence of parents, teachers and Conservative MPs.

Foreign Secretary Mr Raab, who has been savaged for his handling of the crisis in Afghanistan, was demoted to Justice Secretary.

But, following a tense half-hour stand-off with Mr Johnson in his Commons office, he was also handed the consolation title of Deputy Prime Minister, allowing government sources to claim it was a 'promotion'.

He was replaced by Liz Truss in a reshuffle that saw a number of women land senior roles.

Outspoken health minister Nadine Dorries was promoted to the Cabinet as Culture Secretary. She will have responsibility for dealings with the BBC, having previously described the corporation as a 'biased left-wing organisation' that does not deserve the licence fee.

In another eye-catching appointment, Nadhim Zahawi was made Education Secretary after overseeing the Covid vaccine programme. The appointment caps a remarkable rise for a man who did not speak English when he arrived in the UK from Iraq aged nine.

In a surprise sideways move, Michael Gove was handed the housing brief, along with responsibility for the pledge to 'level up' opportunity across the country.

In other moves:

Government sources said the reshuffle was designed to kickstart the delivery of the Prime Minister's domestic agenda, which has been overshadowed by Covid.

Mr Johnson is thought to believe delivering on his 2019 pledges will be critical to his hopes of winning the next election. He said last night: 'The Cabinet I have appointed today will work tirelessly to unite and level up the whole country.'

Speculation about a possible reshuffle reached fever pitch over the past fortnight after Mr Johnson postponed a planned shake-up in July.

But the scale of the clear-out took ministers by surprise, and effectively amounts to a reboot of the Government.

The Prime Minister had been under pressure to sack Mr Williamson since last summer, when he presided over a shambolic U-turn over exam grading.

Mr Johnson, who prizes loyalty, resisted the calls back then but is said to have concluded months ago that he would have to go.

Friends last night acknowledged that Mr Raab was 'disappointed and bruised' by the demotion.

He had been facing calls to quit since the Daily Mail revealed last month that he refused to interrupt his holiday to speak to his Afghan counterpart and ask for help in evacuating UK allies.

And, fatally, he fell out over the crisis with Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, a long-time friend of the PM. A Government source insisted the move was not prompted by Mr Raab's handling of the Afghan crisis and was not a demotion.

The source said the PM had first decided to move Mr Raab to justice before the summer, describing the former international lawyer as a 'round peg in a round hole' for the job.

'The PM believes he is a massive asset and he will now be doing a critical role,' the source said. 'He's been made Deputy Prime Minister and will stand in for the PM at PMQs next week – it is total rubbish to describe it as a demotion.'

Steve Barclay succeeds Mr Gove as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and minister for the Cabinet Office. Former minister Simon Clarke returns at the Treasury.  

Foreign Secretary who campaigned for end of monarchy... was at Greenham aged 7... and called Britons idlers 

She may be the Queen's 26th foreign secretary, but Liz Truss is the first person in that august position who has ever called publicly for the abolition of the monarchy.

And while she is a darling of the party faithful after striking 63 post-Brexit deals in her role as international trade secretary, news of her republican past will come as a deep shock to her many grassroots supporters.

When she was a student at Oxford she was a Liberal Democrat and spoke in the party's 1994 conference debate on abolishing the monarchy.

She was cheered to the roof when she declared: 'We Liberal Democrats believe in opportunity for all. We do not believe people are born to rule.'

It's fair to say that, from her early days, Truss has been on a dramatic political journey.

Her father was a Left-wing maths professor, while her mother, a nurse, was an anti-nuclear campaigner who took her to the women-only Greenham Common camp in Berkshire where American cruise missiles were sited in the 1980s.