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NEWS
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POLITICS
were promising only to tax the rich, they
understood that they would end up pay-
ing. That’s exactly where we are now.
“We haven’t yet seen the effects of the
tax policies. They will kick in next year
but rising taxes hit hardest working-class
families at the upper end of the wage
scale. Those are the people who
switched.”
This analysis is now widespread in the
party, where the money men worry that
Johnson’s big state conservatism is not
what they (or voters) signed up for. “Tory
MPs and Tory donors are having to adapt
to the idea that their party has become a
bunch of Brexity social democrats,” said
one polling expert. “All those free mar-
keteers have realised they’ve elected
David Owen not Margaret Thatcher.”
Another who knows Johnson well
admitted: “There’s no underpinning phi-
losophy. The only policy in No 10 is
spending money.”
Johnson and Rishi Sunak are under-
stood to accept that they will cut
taxes before the 2024 election and
in the meantime the chancellor
has extracted a promise that new
spending will have to be paid
for. But that is what led to the
decision to raise national
insurance contributions to pay
for social care, a move that
increased the tax burden to its
highest point in 70 years.
Even some in Johnson’s close circle
are worried. Lord Frost, the Brexit
minister, broke cover last week and
said: “The formula for success as a
country is well known: low taxes. Iagree with the chancellor.” But Treasury
wins, such as reining in spending on the
HS2 high speed rail, recently cut across
Johnson’s core “levelling up” message.
The next fight will come over Michael
Gove’s levelling up white paper, due in
the second week of December, seen as a
blueprint for delivering on the promises
of the last election in time for the next
one, due in May 2024. Those who have
seen early drafts say it contains some
interesting ideas “but a lot of demands
for cash”. Briefing has already begun
from the Treasury that Gove will have to
make do with the £4.9 billion allocated
for levelling up in the spending review
last month.
Johnson’s aides are dismissive of
claims of an ideological split, blaming the
pandemic for runaway spending. One
said: “There isn’t a disagreement
about the need for tax cuts. The
question is when and how.”
But there are two dangers for
Johnson. The first is that by mov-
ing left on the economy, he has
exposed his party’s right flank.
Right-wingers are nervous about
an interview Nigel Farage,
former leader of the UK Inde-
pendence Party, gave a week ago,
hinting he could return to frontline
politics, a move that would leach
support in the battleground seats.
Farage’s decision not to put up
candidates against sitting Tory MPs
in 2019 increased the size of John-
son’s landslide. Pollsters estimate
that if Farage had stood his troops
down everywhere, the Tory majorityRishi Sunak
risks being
Westminster’s
Ole Gunnar
Solskjaer if he is
promoted too
soon, says one
adviserTim Shipman Chief Political Commentator
Boris Johnson’s embrace of the big-spending state risks
a confrontation with the party’s right wing. Expect to see
an exchange of fire over tax as the election approaches
T
he grand ballroom of the Rose-
wood London hotel may not
often evoke a hot summer’s day
in postwar New York. But when
the political class gathered there
on Wednesday evening for the
Spectator magazine’s Parlia-
mentarian of the Year awards, a
former cabinet minister surveyed the
room and remarked: “This is like the
wedding at the start of The Godfather: the
most significant things are what is hap-
pening off stage.”
On stage, explaining that Disruptor of
the Year was awarded to the politician
“who has done most to cause chaos for
the government’’ (Angela Rayner), the
host and Spectator editor Fraser Nelson
felt compelled to joke: “We had to
exclude the prime minister from consid-
eration.” It would be unfair competition,
he implied, after weeks of self-inflicted
damage.
Off stage, the mêlée of ministers, MPs,
donors and journalists downed cham-
pagne as they discussed whether the
prime minister needed to shake up his
Downing Street team after setbacks oversleaze, immigration and a speech to the
CBI featuring an eccentric disquisition on
Peppa Pig.
But if the hot topic was organisational
incompetence, Johnson’s bigger problem
is the ideological incoherence of a prime
minister who wants to spend without
restraint and a chancellor and other min-
isters clinging to the last vestiges of fiscal
responsibility.
Not even present on Wednesday was
the MP who has a claim to being the dis-
ruptor of the decade. Steve Baker ran
backbench campaigns against David
Cameron and Theresa May with military
precision, commanding three-figure
rebellions through WhatsApp groups.
This weekend he revealed that he was
planning a new campaign to fight for low
taxes. He is already running pressure
groups on the cost of the government’s
net zero climate pledge and another,
which opposes new Covid restrictions.
Baker said: “I’m looking at a party
which is going in the wrong direction and
I’m looking at building an organisation
that will provide a vehicle to unleash the
potential of the United Kingdom andredefine a free market conservatism for
the future.
“We have to rediscover the kind of con-
servatism that cuts taxes, not raises
them. The public always want higher
spending and lower taxes; the trick is to
persuade them to pick one.”
Baker’s return to the fray will cause
palpitations in the whips’ office and
No 10. They hoped the Owen Paterson
affair — in which right-wing veterans per-
suaded Johnson to tear up anti-sleaze
rules to save the former cabinet minister
(a move that backfired spectacularly) —
was a sign that the old right was dwin-
dling in relevance and effectiveness.
But in the Rosewood ballroom, David
Davis, the former Brexit secretary, gave a
throaty laugh and said: “They might be
disappointed.” Davis recounted his time
door-knocking in “red wall” seats in 2019
to argue that Downing Street is wrong to
hope that throwing money at those Tory
gains will be enough to hold them. Davis
said: “The standard response on the
doorstep from bricklayers, plumbers,
electricians, drivers — the skilled working
class — was that while Labour said theyIncoming!
Is PM
being
outflanked
on his right?
Truss
joked:
It’ll be
better
when
I’m in
charge