With last week’s ministerial re-shuffle, the deck chairs have been re-arranged on the good ship Cameron. Widely interpreted as a shuffle to make his government more palatable at the polls, the question now becomes: can British Prime Minister David Cameron chart a course to a majority government in 2015 in an ocean strewn with policy icebergs?

It should be smooth sailing for the Cameron Conservatives. After all, the economy is beginning to hum, unemployment is dropping, and Britain has finally dug itself out of the considerable hole wrought by the economic downturn of 2008-2009. Yes, the deficit remains high, but the Conservatives are the only party with a credible deficit reduction strategy, and the ratings agencies have recently re-affirmed their confidence in the country’s finances. Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne have made a number of tough policy choices and should reap the reward.

Cameron, like the Harper Conservatives in Canada’s 2008 and 2011 elections, is blessed with weak foes: the British population has not warmed to Labour leader Ed Miliband; his coalition partner Nick Clegg has already been forced to stave off one coup attempt and faces the possibility of more given the dismal poll position of the Liberal Democrats; and Nigel Farage, the leader of UK Independence Party, might have produced a shockwave during the recent European Parliamentary elections, but faces a much stiffer challenge to win in Britain, with its first-past-the-post electoral system.

So, what’s Cameron’s problem? In a word: Europe.

The Conservative Party’s relationship with Europe has long been a tortured one. The loss of Empire in the aftermath of World War II and the subsequent tethering of the United Kingdom to the European Union, with the concomitant erosion of national sovereignty, has always rubbed a significant segment of the Conservative base the wrong way. The United Kingdom, in their view, should be the ones giving the orders, or at least not be forced into taking them from squishy Continental bureaucrats.

The restive Tory backbench has already extracted a pledge from Cameron to hold an in-out referendum on the EU in the mandate of the next Parliament (likely in 2017), but with each perceived slight from Brussels and subsequent fuss kicked up by the EU-hating UKIP, the pressure builds from the backbench for more and quicker action from Cameron on Europe.

Seen through this lens, last week’s Cabinet reshuffle can be viewed as a sop to the Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. Gone is Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who was opposed to plans to limit the power of the European Court of Human Rights, which occasionally makes controversial rulings that trump British courts and infuriate Tory nationalists. Also gone is Kenneth Clarke, a veteran minister who has for decades been a moderate voice on Europe. Some even suspect that William Hague was removed from his post as Foreign Secretary, not because he is planning on stepping down from Parliament in 2015, but rather because he was not reliably anti-Europe, unlike his replacement Philip Hammond.

Despite these moves, one gets the sense the prime minister would rather not talk about Europe and is being forced into the discussion. It’s easy to see why he’d rather avoid it: uncertainty over Britain’s future in the European Union is one of the biggest threats to Britain’s economic recovery. Corporate lobby groups in the UK have issued strong warnings that leaving the European Union would mean of loss of exports for British companies to Europe and a loss of global investment in Britain. Both would cost British jobs. Like his Conservative ally in Canada, Cameron’s ace re-election card in 2015 will be a reasonably strong economy, the very card some of his backbenchers are working hard to deal away.

Union with Europe is challenging enough, but Cameron is also facing another referendum showdown, this one over Scotland, which also threatens to derail the economic recovery in the United Kingdom.

Although the temperature of the debate hasn’t yet neared its 1995 equivalent in Canada, there is nervousness in the pro-Union camp. That said, the received wisdom is the “Better Together” pro-union campaign will carry the day come September. While this would be a reassuring result for the UK economy, it does pose a different kind of problem for Cameron: there is only one Conservative MP from Scotland and no prospects of increasing that total.

The perverse reality for Cameron is a rump union of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland would be dominated by the Conservatives. Whether it would be a prize worth having, or even if Wales and Northern Ireland would want to stay in such a union, is another matter.

So, how will Cameron chart his re-election course? By muddling through, it would appear. Several of last week’s reshuffle moves seem to have been guided purely by electoral considerations.

Indeed, the main criticism of David Cameron has always been that he’s more concerned with appearances than with policy. The recent reshuffle provides ammunition to support that case.

Are pollsters telling you there’s a “woman” problem for your party and government? Appoint more women ministers: check. Polling is telling you that “radical” Education Secretary Michael Gove is rubbing too many people the wrong way? Bust him down to the role of Government Whip: check.

But will his moves work?

Looking ahead to the election in 2015, the prospects of another hung Parliament loom large. The Tories can’t win a majority on their current support (33% to 35%). Their prospects of governing without a formal coalition partner, as the Harper Conservatives did from 2006 until 2011, are nil. Their relatively inefficient vote will require a result closer to 40% for a majority, which appears out of reach. Labour are in front, but are behind the historical levels reached by opposition parties at this point in a government mandate, which has Labour party grandees concerned. Miliband is also having trouble connecting with the electorate. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats’ best hope is to hang on to enough seats to retain the balance of power and be drawn into another coalition government.

It is easy to imagine an outcome in which the composition of the Parliament remains largely the same, with all three main parties casting aside their current leadership.

If another hung parliament is indeed the result in May 2015 and the prime minister is out of a job, David Cameron will surely wonder why he followed his backbench into a perilous discussion on Europe instead of leading them to the higher ground of the economy.

The job of any captain is to avoid the icebergs, not to steer right into them. If he does the latter, Cameron will have only himself to blame.

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Andrew MacDougall is Senior Executive Consultant at MSLGROUP London (UK) and a former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.