Operations "red meat" and "save the big dog" aren't I would suspect massively badly chosen names, but actually quite deliberate. Number 10 knows that is is leaking like the Titanic after the iceberg, so it has to play with what it has. 1/ 
It has also been working on its "culture war" for long enough that it can finally start to use it to pay dividends, see also attacks on BBC among other things. They know, I suspect, that they can't actually argue their way out of the mess they are in, so have to lean into it. 2/
So, what do you do? Well, you make what would otherwise be seen as elitist, self-serving egotism come across as more "one of the lads. Down to earth plain speaking". You don't try and polish the turd, so to speak, because there's no way you can do that. 3/
You make the parties seem part of a, I suppose you'd say, "laddish culture", a culture which they hope will play well to that certain section of the electorate who still unfathomably seem to think that the party with an 80 seat majority, and which has been in power for....4/
over a decade, are actually the ones fighting against "woke elitists". The language is, I would personally suggest, deliberate as a performance piece. It may not play well to some old school conservatives, I can pretty much guarantee it won't. 5/
The government knows that the old school conservative members are declining though. So it needs to appeal to how it perceives other sections of the electorate who may support them in the future. It's cynical, but it is deliberate, and, worryingly, may actually work. 6/
One of Johnson's greatest selling points, albeit a massively overly manufactured and false one, was that he was a "man of the people". The hair, badly fitting suits, clownish behaviour and general buffoonery were carefully cultivated, and it worked. 7/
The Conservatives need a way to bring that image back if they are to have any hope of salvaging anything from the inevitable wreckage which he has wrought on them, so this is what they have got. 8/
The actual operations themselves play into this as well. Militarising the channel, removing restrictions et al play well to certain supporters and make it seem as though Johnson has been held back by civil servants etc, so it is fair that they should go while he stays. 9/
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