Look out Boris... tide’s starting to turn against you
BORIS JOHNSON’S huge gamble on NHS and social care funding is a key milestone in his transformation as a politician. He began his rise to the top as a traditional, liberal-minded Conservative, sceptical of the big state and enthusiastic about low taxation. He regularly held up Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to mockery over their addiction to bureaucratic expansion.
Yet now he has even exceeded New Labour through his decision to make a vast injection of cash into healthcare, with the twin aims of cutting NHS waiting lists and ending the social care crisis.
Amounting to £36billion over the next three years, this unprecedented sum will be met by a 1.25 per cent hike in national insurance.
Added to the tax increases imposed in the last Budget, this plan means that the overall burden of taxation will reach its highest level since the post-war socialist government of Clement Attlee.
Despite Mr Johnson’s victory at Westminster in a vote on the scheme, many Conservatives are indignant, particularly because the Government has breached its manifesto commitments.
One furious Thatcherite commentator wrote that “the Tories have disgraced themselves, lied to their voters, repudiated their principles and treated millions of their supporters with utter contempt”.
But Boris’s defenders maintain his approach is brave, necessary and astute. He had to act boldly because of the disastrous fall-out from the pandemic, which meant inaction was never an option.
Not only has the backlog of NHS cases reached 5.6 million but the virus shone a cruel spotlight on the inadequacies of the social care sector, including severe staff shortages, low pay and inconsistent standards.
Just as cruelly, such failings are compounded by an arbitrary system that imposes unpredictable, catastrophic bills on families, which can mean the liquidation of all their assets.
Nor have most of Boris’s critics come up with a viable alternative to the national insurance increase.
For decades politicians have admitted that the care sector is in crisis, but Johnson is the first prime minister to come up with a potential resolution. Even Andy Burnham, the increasingly impressive Labour Mayor of Manchester, told the BBC that the Prime Minister deserves credit for having the guts to come up with a plan.
It could be also argued that, far from abandoning Conservatism, Johnson is just following in the fine Tory tradition of flexible pragmatism, unencumbered by dogma.
Winston Churchill, the greatest prime minister of them all, raged against socialism in the 1930s yet went into fruitful coalition with Labour in 1940.
But more serious than the charge of political inconsistency is the danger that the plan could backfire because of its potential flaws, thereby creating a mood of disillusion, hurting enterprise and alienating a large section of the electorate. Already there are signs of serious trouble.
On Friday, an opinion poll put the Tories on just 33 per cent, two points behind Labour, who enjoyed the first lead in months.
Just as ominously, 60 per cent of respondents said the Conservatives no longer care about keeping tax down. Such findings emphasise how the Government must ensure its plan achieves its purpose, otherwise Boris and his party will pay a very heavy price. Perhaps the biggest risk is that much of the extra cash for the NHS will be squandered through waste and bureaucracy before it reaches the front line. This is, after all, a Government that has spent £37billion on the botched Covid track-and-trace regime, while on the very day of the Commons vote, it was revealed the NHS is hiring 42 chief executives on salaries averaging £223,261 to manage integrated care boards.
Just as worryingly, the NHS may swallow up most of the money, leaving little for social care. One economist predicted that the care plan will help fewer than one in 20 families, with the result that forced home sales will continue.
At the same time, additional tax burdens on businesses could dent the fragile post-covid recovery.
Politically, Boris’s measure could galvanise the Labour Party. Their leader Sir Keir Starmer and his MPS may have given an incoherent response last week, but over the long term they could make real gains. After years in the wilderness, politics is now returning to their territory.
Margaret Thatcher famously declared “there is no alternative” to her approach. Boris Johnson could make the same defence of his NHS and social care policy.
In the aftermath of Covid, the need is great, the hour is urgent.
But he must now use all his formidable authority to get the delivery right.
The overall burden of taxation will reach its highest since Clement Attlee