Lucky Boris on course to lead the Tories into the next election and win it
Friends went to be vaccinated. It was a fascinating experience, politically. The queue was like a focus group. Everyone was cheerful. Somebody said that it was great to have something to be proud of: something we British were best at. That received enthusiastic agreement. On the EU, the tone was mostly more in sorrow than in anger, but when someone else said that they now understood the necessity for Brexit, there was no dissent. Nor was there over a further comment: “You’ve got to hand it to Boris.”
Not for the first time – or, no doubt, the last – the Prime Minister is in luck. Everyone knows that the anti-Covid campaign was marred by mistakes: remember PPE? There were times when the government was regularly contradicting itself. It did not seem to know its Rs from its elbow. But the public are aware of two points. First, no Western country came close to getting everything right. Second – the ace of trumps – we got the vaccine.
That will be especially helpful over Brexit. Problems are constantly emerging. Some of the government’s optimistic forecasts have been discredited: no doubt more will be. But the public are now ready to blame the Europeans, with some justification. The von der Leyden degringolade was the EU at its worst. Large numbers of serious Germans are now queuing up to denounce her as useless, someone who spent her entire career failing upwards. It is clear that Angela Merkel dumped her in a supposedly very important EU job to remove her incompetence from German politics. Especially when she was defence minister. That had its comic aspects. German troops training with broomsticks because no rifles were available: the descendants of Frederick the Great reincarnated as “Dad’s Army” – too implausible for a comedy script. That said, some of Germany’s neighbours may be relieved to learn that these days, the best the Bundeswehr could mount is witches-broomstick krieg.
Boris is also fortunate in another crucial matter. Peter Oborne has just produced a book accusing him of serial dishonesty. I have not yet read it, but knowing Peter, every fact will have been checked. One might have thought that this was damning. Yet it may not matter. As they would say in the City, it is all in the price.
But the crucial question remains. How will Boris use his luck? He faces three related challenges. Together, they are at least as great as Covid. The first is a return to fiscal normality. Eventually, the deficit will have to be brought under control. But that should not be a short-term priority. We have to grow ourselves ought of the current economic mess and that means exploiting both QE and the markets’ willingness to buy gilts at only-just-positive interest rates, plus pent-up consumer spending. All this is risky. The government must do everything possible to divert monetary growth into jobs, output and investment, as opposed to wages and prices. Even so, it is probably inevitable that at some stage, there will be a spike in inflation. As long as it is only a spike, the government should keep its nerve. There are sound arguments against proclaiming fiscal laxity as a policy: even sounder ones for pursuing it. There is no point in talking like Singapore and behaving like 1960s Sweden.
The second challenge is the need to use all this additional public spending effectively. More will have to be spent on the NHS. That is a political necessity. Let us turn it into a drive for better health care. As a recent consumer of the NHS’s services, in St Thomas’s hospital, I need no persuading that when it is at its best – as in Tommy’s – it deserves every accolade. Yet it is not always at its best. What about a Royal Commission, to work out how we universalise best practice?
There should also be a drive for higher standards in schools. Remedial work will already be necessary to repair the damage of the school-less months. We must push ahead beyond that. This will be a science century. Children who are merely equipped to throw stones at crows will end up swelling the dole queues and the prison population. In George W. Bush words, we must “leave no child behind.”
All this would have another political consequence. The Tories have always been seen as viscerally opposed to public spending: the political wing of the Treasury, never happier than when telling hungry sheep about the price of grass. That is emphatically not Boris. He could be the Tory leader who convinces the public that, in moderation, he has nothing against public spending as long as the public benefits. Why does he not set himself the goal of ensuring that a pound spent by the government on the taxpayers’ behalf brings the same value for money as the pound they spend for themselves?
If Boris could do all that, he would deal with the third challenge: virus socialism, as proclaimed by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. That would involve an Attlee-esque drive for taxing, spending and state control. But the dangers of all this are already receding. The voters are a long way off being ready for any such message and Starmer is no proclaimer. He is not as bad as he seemed at moments last week. He is not that good either. An anti-Attlee jibe may well apply: a modest man, with a lot to be modest about.
It is hard to believe that a Boris premiership will ever settle down to stability. Then again, Margaret Thatcher’s never did. But our current PM has a chance to entrench himself. It now seems certain that he will lead the Tories into the next election and probable that he will win it. To put it mildly, that has not always been the case.