Remember when the deficit was top priority? Now it’s spend, spend, spend

The 2015 general election took place just five years ago. Yet it feels far longer. So much has changed since. Not least the Conservative attitude to spending.

For the entire 2010-15 parliament, the Conservatives argued vehemently that we must keep a tight hold on the national purse strings. After such a disastrous economic crash, the only way to save Britain’s finances was to cut spending.

Five years on, we’re in the middle of yet more turmoil. But this time, the message from the Conservatives is the opposite. After such a disastrous economic crash, the only way to save Britain’s finances is to increase spending.

This, at any rate, seemed to be what Boris Johnson was saying yesterday, during an interview on Times Radio.

“This is the time to invest in infrastructure!” boomed the Prime Minister.

“This is to make those long-term decisions for the good of the country!”

His interviewers asked him how he was going to pay for it all. This, of course, was the type of question that used to be flung endlessly at Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader in 2010-15, not least by the Conservatives (or rather, that particular incarnation of the Conservatives). Whenever he talked about investing in things, they always demanded to know where the money was going to come from. Every last penny had to be accounted for. Think of the deficit. Nothing was more important than cutting the deficit. Especially after an economic crash.

Mr Johnson, however, was able to wave the exact same question airily aside.

Numbers? Money? Oh, the Chancellor would set out all that stuff. All in good time. The point was, “What you can’t do is go back to what people called austerity.” Slight pause. “It wasn’t actually austerity, but people called it austerity ...”

Before the listener could contemplate this answer too deeply (we mustn’t go back to austerity, even though it never happened), Mr Johnson moved on.

“This is a moment to give our country the skills, the infrastructure, the long-term investment that we need … The moment for a Rooseveltian approach ...”

Mr Johnson will be saying more about this “Rooseveltian approach” in a speech today. Yesterday’s interview was a mere amuse-bouche.

Still, he returned to the subject as often as possible, even when it wasn’t actually relevant. When asked to describe his recent near-death experience in hospital, he went back to talking about his infrastructure speech. When asked whether he’d abandoned his distaste for a tax on sugary food, he went back to talking about his infrastructure speech. When asked why he’d refused to sack Dominic Cummings, he went back to talking about his infrastructure speech. “A big, big programme to build the nation back to health … Bounce forward is what we want to do … We really, really want to build back better, to do things differently …”

In no time at all, times have changed. And the Conservatives are changing with them.

Whenever Labour talked about investing in things, the Tories always demanded to know where the money was coming from