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Thailand’s elevation of its youngest-ever prime minister last week averted an immediate crisis, but the new administration could rekindle old strains between the country’s most influential political family and its powerful royalist-military elite.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the 38-year-old scion of Thailand’s Shinawatra clan, was appointed premier last week following the sudden dismissal of her predecessor, Srettha Thavisin, by the constitutional court over an ethics breach.

Her election by parliament has preserved a shaky alliance between the Shinawatras’ Pheu Thai party and its historic rivals aligned with the royalist-military establishment at a crucial time for Thailand, as south-east Asia’s second-largest economy struggles to mount a recovery following the pandemic.

But analysts and political observers are questioning how long Paetongtarn, a political newcomer, will manage to remain in power. The conservative elite has repeatedly removed elected prime ministers through military coups and court verdicts.

“Although Paetongtarn will likely survive in the role for the near term at least, she faces considerable risk of ouster by the establishment,” said Peter Mumford, south-east Asia head at Eurasia Group.

Paetongtarn’s election capped a rapid ascent. The new premier, who has never held political office, is the youngest child of populist former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a billionaire telecommunications tycoon who was ousted in a 2006 coup and has dominated the Thai political landscape for the past 20 years. Thaksin’s sister Yingluck also served as prime minister before being deposed by the conservative elite.

Thaksin, 75, does not have an official position in the new government, but he has played an increasingly active public role since returning to Thailand last year from 15 years of self-imposed exile, and could wield more influence in his daughter’s administration.

A rejuvenated Shinawatra clan is unlikely to be welcomed by the royalist-military establishment, which has maintained its grip on power despite repeated election losses.

“While many anti-Thaksin conservatives will be angered by a Shinawatra running the country again, others likely wanted Thaksin to put his family on the line, perhaps feeling that it gives them more leverage over him,” Mumford said, noting “Thaksin’s penchant for meddling and overreaching”.

Paetongtarn has inherited a coalition government that was an unlikely marriage of convenience. Srettha, a former property tycoon and ally of the Shinawatras, was seen as a compromise between Pheu Thai and military-backed parties keen to block the progressive Move Forward party from power.

Move Forward, which won the most seats in last year’s election, had campaigned on a platform of wide-reaching reforms, including to the country’s notorious lèse majesté law. The party was dissolved this month by the constitutional court, which said Move Forward’s policies amounted to an attempt to overthrow Thailand’s political system as a constitutional monarchy.

The truce enabled Thaksin’s return from exile, where he was avoiding a prison sentence on corruption and abuse of power charges, but signals are rising that the fragile détente is fraying. Srettha was dismissed this month over the cabinet appointment of a former lawyer and Shinawatra ally who had been briefly imprisoned on charges of bribing a court official, a violation of the military-drafted constitution.

Thaksin was charged in May for allegedly insulting the country’s monarchy in 2015.

Paetongtarn’s premiership also faces its most likely challenge from the constitutional court, analysts said. Four Thaksin allies who have served as prime minister have been removed by the court in recent years. The court has also dissolved previous incarnations of Thaksin’s party and Move Forward, forcing them to reconstitute under new banners.

The country’s judiciary has become “part and parcel of the royalist establishment”, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, professor of international relations at Chulalongkorn University, citing the dissolution of election-winning parties and rulings favouring the elite. “What we are seeing is a judicial overdrive and there will be repercussions.”

Analysts said one threat to Paetongtarn could be a $14bn cash handout scheme, a campaign pledge central to Srettha’s ambitions to reinvigorate Thailand’s economy, which has, with an annual growth rate of just 2 per cent, lagged behind regional peers.

The plan would see the government give one-off payments of 10,000 baht ($290) to about 50mn low-income citizens via a digital wallet. But it has been repeatedly delayed by legal and financial obstacles, as well as opposition from the central bank, which favours structural reform to address weak productivity and an ageing population over stimulus measures to spur consumer spending.

Paetongtarn has said she will examine the policy to ensure it complies with Thailand’s fiscal discipline law, but economists say its prospects are increasingly dim.

Populist policies have doomed previous Pheu Thai governments. Yingluck was impeached by the parliament in 2015 for alleged mismanagement of a rice subsidy scheme, months after she was ousted in a military coup.

“For a political party to advertise populism can be a constitutional ‘no-no’,” said Paul Chambers at Thailand’s Naresuan University. “That’s what has bedevilled the Pheu Thai party.”

Barack Obama declared that the US was “ready for a new chapter” with Kamala Harris as president in a rousing speech on Tuesday but warned Democrats that they were facing a “tight race” to elect her and defeat Donald Trump in November.

Speaking at the Democratic convention in Chicago, the former president deployed his political star power to try to quash any doubts within the party over Harris’s candidacy, while cautioning the crowd against complacency about the election outcome.

“Make no mistake: it will be a fight,” Obama said. “For all the incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the past few weeks, for all the rallies and the memes, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country.”

Although Obama, 63, has now been out of office for nearly eight years, he is among the most popular and influential Democrats, and party leaders hoped his primetime address would help unite and mobilise its supporters behind Harris.

Obama’s return to Chicago, where he began his political career, came as some Democrats tried to draw parallels between his successful 2008 campaign to be elected the first Black US president and Harris’s bid to become the country’s first female president.

As he took the stage, Obama was met with chants of “yes we can”, his own campaign slogan. Later he started a chant of “yes she can”, referring to Harris.

Obama’s speech deployed some of the soaring rhetoric that was a hallmark of his presidency but also mocked Trump as a “whining” self-interested billionaire and conspiracy theorist whose act had gone “pretty stale”.

“The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbour who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day,” he said. “We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos. We’ve seen that movie — and we all know that the sequel’s usually worse.”

Obama endorsed Harris last month, a few days after she launched her campaign following Joe Biden’s decision to drop his re-election bid. But Tuesday’s address was his most forceful statement of support for her.

The former Democratic president spoke just after Michelle Obama, the former first lady, who remains hugely popular within the party. “Something wonderfully magical is in the air,” she told the audience. “America, hope is making a comeback.”

But like her husband, Michelle Obama also used her speech to urge action from fellow Democrats — and to tear into Trump.

“In some states, just a handful of votes in every precinct could decide the winner,” she said. “We need to vote in numbers that erase any doubt. We need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us.”

The former first lady received some of the loudest cheers of the night when she called out Trump for his “limited narrow view of the world” and, referring to her husband and herself, said he had been “threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happen to be Black”.

“Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” she added, in a reference to Trump’s suggestions that immigrants are taking jobs from African-Americans.

The Obamas’ speeches were significant for a party trying to paper over splits related to Israel’s war in Gaza and bad blood surrounding the ousting of Biden from the top of the ticket.

Barack Obama had initially defended Biden, with whom he had a complicated relationship in office that was occasionally marked by disagreements, after a disastrous debate against Trump in late June.

But he was conspicuously silent as Democrats piled pressure on the 81-year-old president to quit the race.

On Tuesday, Obama spent a few words honouring Biden’s legacy, saying he had “defended democracy at a moment of great danger”.

As the Obamas spoke, Chicago police clashed with protesters outside the Israeli consulate near the city’s central business district.

Their addresses were preceded by a ceremonial roll call vote that formally nominated Harris as the party’s presidential candidate, a tally that was capped with a roaring endorsement by Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, her home state.

Harris and Tim Walz, her running mate, were not present, instead campaigning in Milwaukee in front of about 15,000 people in the same arena where Trump held the Republican convention last month.

While Democrats have shown new enthusiasm for Harris since she replaced Biden on the ticket just a month ago, she will need to translate the initial burst of excitement for her bid into votes in battleground states.

“We shouldn’t delude ourselves that it’s an automatic victory,” Anita Dunn, a former senior adviser to Biden at the White House, said on the sidelines of the DNC.

Trump on Tuesday travelled to Michigan, another big swing state, to speak about “crime and safety”.

According to a FiveThirtyEight polling average, Harris is leading Trump by almost 3 percentage points nationally and is marginally ahead in most of the swing states.