Camilla Tominey:

The PM has carelessly burnt bridges with his core vote – and for no obvious long-term political gain

When I covered the last general election, I met quite a few voters who refused to reveal any political partisanship and simply said they were “voting for Boris”. At times he did appear to transcend the Conservative Party, particularly in the traditional Labour heartlands of the Midlands and the North where some people didn’t seem to be voting for the Tories to “get Brexit done” but for “Boris” personally.

Thanks to his undoubted charm and charisma – and deserved reputation as a vote-winning machine – it’s perhaps understandable that the Prime Minister thinks he can get away with anything. Yet his manifesto-breaking health and social care levy is surely a step too far even for the man who once declared: “My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it?”

Why? Because the money isn’t obviously going to fix the social care system, and it is certainly not guaranteed to transform the NHS. All the Prime Minister seems to have succeeded in doing is infuriate millions of traditional Tory voters – as well as his newfound fellowship of Red Wallers. And for what?

Surely, if there was one word to describe the average “Johnsonian” it would be “reformer” – be it of Britain’s relationship with Brussels or the bloated Civil Service – and yet any detail on how the NHS will actually be improved by this taxpayer-funded £36billion splurge remains lacking. There are doubts that it will even “solve” the social care crisis, let alone the health service’s ills.

What Tory voter – North or South– do you know who thinks the NHS is unequivocally a wonderful thing that must have endless pots of cash poured into it, no questions asked? It’s the stuff of Islington virtue-signalling fantasy.

The timing is also baffling beyond belief. The pandemic isn’t over. The economy is slowing. Inflation is on the rise and household budgets are feeling the squeeze. The imminent end of furlough threatens a winter of discontent and yet Downing Street believes this is the right moment to tax the employed, and double tax the self employed while making life more financially difficult for pensioners and small businesses?

Oh, and let’s throw in a personal allowance tax freeze and corporation tax hike while we’re at it to further erode the promise of post-brexit prosperity and make us no more competitive than Germany and France. I guess if you can so easily break manifesto pledges then it doesn’t really matter if you renege on your “Global” Britain pledge too.

It could well be that Johnson was attempting some cunning sub-blairite ploy to park his tanks on Labour’s lawns. Blair was a master at denying political ground to his rivals, triangulating furiously in order to bestride the Left and the Right of politics. But the former Labour leader “rolled the pitch” and made a good effort to explain what he was up to.

The Prime Minister and No10 have done none of that. Instead, they have

What Conservative voter – North or South – do you know who thinks the NHS is unequivocally a wonderful thing?

basically listened to a few focus groups and carelessly decided that their core supporters will willingly swallow a bitter pill “because of Covid”, which has become the 2021 equivalent of “despite Brexit”.

Yet have they stopped to think how many people already feel like they’ve spent the past 18 months choking down the bad medicine of repeated lockdowns?

Maybe they’re thinking they don’t need so many of their traditional Thatcherite supporters come the next general election. Now the party demographics have changed, they might be under the impression that most voters are Left-of-centre economically, and Right-of-centre politically.

Yet according to the latest British Social Attitudes Survey, support for tax and spend is going down, not up:

53 per cent supported an increase last year, down from the 60 per cent who did so in 2017. Yes, two thirds (65 per cent) named health among their top two priorities, but almost half (47 per cent) said education, while a quarter of people wanted more money to be poured into housing or police and prisons.

So what Johnson might have thought was clever politics in Westminster last week – bouncing Sir Keir Starmer into opposing an NHS tax rise – isn’t guaranteed to play out that way in the real world.

The early evidence suggests that his gambit may already be backfiring. After 149 consecutive leads, the Conservatives are now trailing Labour for the first time since January, according to Yougov. Only a week ago the Tories had a four-point lead. As featured in the Telegraph today, another poll sees the Tories losing their Red Wall seats.

The latest surveys also suggest that just 1 per cent of voters think they will be better off after the levy is imposed, while 58 per cent say they will be worse off. Far from increased taxation to fund the NHS being an electoral slam dunk – 45 per cent are happy with it but 42 per cent aren’t. Meanwhile, a not inconsiderable 59 per cent now say that Johnson’s Tories do not care about keeping taxes low. When asked if the Government cares about improving the NHS, 53 per cent think they do not and just 31 per cent say they do.

Bottom line: Johnson has trashed the Tories’ reputation as a low-tax party and doesn’t seem to have got much in return.

Of course, there is still a long time before the next general election. At the coming Tory party conference, the PM has a chance to explain why he has apparently declared war on his core voters. But the wider electorate? Thanks to this debacle we can expect Labour to be relentlessly asking: can you trust Boris Johnson ever again?

Normally, Tories turn a blind eye to suggestions the Prime Minister doesn’t have a robust relationship with the truth. But now? And what of the sceptical voters who gave him a chance simply on the basis he seemed marginally more trustworthy than an avowed Marxist? Starmer remains an unknown quantity to voters while all Johnson seems to be doing is showing his true colours.

Even if all these policies do end up polling well, the Prime Minister forgets at his peril that when it comes to winning elections, what really matters to the public is trust and leadership.