With the number of cabinet sackings far exceeding the Tory majority in the Commons, Boris Johnson has started his reign as prime minister by unleashing a blue terror. With Dominic Raab as his deputy and foreign secretary and Priti Patel as home secretary, Johnson’s cabinet is the quintessence of remainer nightmares.

Some will say this means an immediate general election is likely, interpreting a sharp pivot to the right as an attempt to outflank Nigel Farage and his Brexit party. These appointments sound the no-deal klaxon so loudly that it will be heard unequivocally in Brussels.

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Yet paradoxically, stuffing his cabinet with members of the European Research Group (ERG) may make a no-deal exit less likely, not more. Members of the new cabinet now have a stake in retaining power and position as well as pursuing ideological purity. Johnson will offer them the chance to negotiate a future free trade deal with both the EU and the US. A chaotic no-deal exit might jeopardise all of that.

And the lesson of the past two decades has been that Farage is always prepared to go one step further to the right than the Tory party, meaning that a general election prior to leaving the EU would be an enormous gamble.

So Johnson is, in fact, more likely to attempt a Brexit in name only or “Brino”. This would see the UK exit the political union at the end of October, while for the time being remaining in everything else. That would mean leaving the European council, commission, and parliament while staying in the customs union and single market. It will also mean the continuation of free movement and the UK’s full financial contribution, so that the benefits and burdens are in balance.

The political declaration will then set out a timetable for a Canada-style free trade agreement to be negotiated, with a timeframe of three to five years – a meaningful period for a premiership, a blink of the eye for a generational project such as Brexit. The UK would then cut over from de facto EU membership to the new partnership at that point. This would enable Johnson to claim that he had torn up Theresa May’s near-universally hated withdrawal agreement and avoided the “undemocratic” backstop.

The brinkmanship will come over what happens if no free trade deal is concluded in the agreed timeframe. The EU’s opening position will be that the backstop should be revived. But Johnson has three ways to tempt them to concede. First, the money. Such an arrangement would mean Britain pumping in around £60bn to the EU without any control over how it is spent. That may prove tempting for many leaders.

Second, the threat of no deal. After years of burnishing his “madman” credentials and with a cabinet of no-dealers, there is little doubt of the veracity of his “do or die” promise, even if the impact would be felt most acutely by the UK. With the global economy showing signs of slowing, EU leaders know that a no-deal exit could tip the European economy into recession, damaging their own electoral prospects. No matter the country, all politicians are in the business of self-preservation first.

Third, with a five-year time horizon, it means a no-deal exit would be someone else’s problem. There is a good chance he pulls it off.

Such an agreement would have serious prospects of passing the Commons since it would probably secure the support of many Labour MPs from leave-supporting constituencies. With much of the ERG in the cabinet, parliamentary opposition from the Tory benches would be far lower than that faced by May. But with a near nonexistent majority, culling such a large number of cabinet ministers also tells us that a general election is probably inevitable this year.

The most brutal reshuffle in decades means that Johnson will be unable to rely on a parliamentary majority for any domestic legislation, whether to pass a finance bill or to fix any of the multitude of problems facing the country. No matter what happens with Brexit, Johnson will be unable to govern for long with so many skilled and vengeful enemies on the backbenches. A general election is the only way to change the parliamentary arithmetic in his favour and diminish the chokehold his Tory opponents have over him.

No matter the rhetoric, opposition parties are unlikely to welcome a general election if Johnson delivers Brexit with a deal. The Brexit party’s fox would have been shot and its supporters seduced by cosying up to Trump. Having made stopping Brexit their defining purpose, the Liberal Democrats would be redundant – their pitch as a kinder, gentler, pro-European Toryism rendered irrelevant. Jo Swinson’s defence of the coalition government and ruling out working with Jeremy Corbyn might be seen as costly errors.

The Labour party, too, is in perilous territory, riven by division and facing the prospect of its 2017 coalition dissolving. By prevaricating over Brexit, Corbyn has lost his reputation for “straight-talking, honest politics” and with Brexit over, remainers that supported Labour in 2017 are likely to be more sceptical in a future general election.

Johnson’s premiership will mark a decisive break from both the Tory-led coalition and the May government that followed it. Johnson, who was born in the US, seems to draw inspiration from across the Atlantic. It’s not hard to imagine him declaring 1 November as a national holiday (our “independence day” no doubt). Expect him to govern as Republicans do: cutting taxes while maintaining or increasing spending, so exploding the deficit.

Eye-catching announcements on spending on police, defence, education and, of course, £350m a week for the NHS, seem likely. With the UK legally out of the EU, he will surely journey to Washington with great fanfare, opening trade negotiations with Trump in parallel with those with the EU. And perhaps Johnson might even promise to “make Britain great again”, as we go it alone in the world.

• Tom Kibasi is director of the Institute for Public Policy Research and chair of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice. He writes in a personal capacity