Boris must tell the Tories what he wants his Government to be

Covid and our gradual emergence from lockdowns and restrictions still dominate political life. But slowly and steadily conventional politics – and the decisions and controversies of government – are making a comeback.

In hospitals, doctors wonder how the NHS will cope with the backlogs that built up when fighting Covid was the priority. In the Border Force, they worry about the thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel to come to Britain. In the Bank of England and Treasury, they debate the risk of inflation, the fiscal hangover from Covid, and getting the economy moving again.

In Parliament, Conservative MPs worry about fulfilling the promises made to their voters before and since Covid struck. There are pledges to “level up” the country, fix social care, control immigration, reduce carbon emissions to Net Zero, and many more. There is the pensions “triple lock”, and the promise not to increase income tax, national insurance contributions or VAT.

On all these issues, it is not unfair to say we do not know what the Government plans to do. A new agreement with France aims to tackle the Channel crossings, but nobody believes it will stop them. There is reportedly a draft plan to fund social care, yet the Government and the Conservative Party remain divided about raising taxes to pay for it. There is a zealous determination for Britain to lead the world in reaching Net Zero, but no plan for how to achieve it.

The week before last, Boris Johnson made a speech on his determination to level-up the country. The speech was criticised, mostly unfairly, for lacking in substance. In fact, the Prime Minister made important arguments about how it is not necessary to undermine the prosperity of successful areas to help regions in need of support, and how levelling up will require a strategic role for the state in the economy, decentralisation, better infrastructure and more investment in technical and vocational education.

The real question was whether the Government is likely to turn these valid observations into deliverable policies that can succeed. “There has got to be a catalytic role for government,” the PM argued, “and government is there to provide a strategic lead.” Citing the unification of East and West Germany, he concluded, “Germany has succeeded in levelling up where we have not.”

But there is as yet little to suggest that this insight is informing policy. The Government has shown itself willing to intervene in the economy, but in an unstrategic, ad hoc manner. As one of his first actions, the Business Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, tore up the industrial strategy he had inherited and pointedly refused to replace it.

More recently, ministers refused to intercede in the sale of Britain’s largest producer of semiconductors to a Chinese-owned company, despite a global shortage of semiconductors and concerns – from economic and national security experts – that the sale would contribute to China’s pursuit of technological superiority over the West. At the last moment the PM was forced to ask his national security adviser to review the decision.

Partly, this incoherence is about ideology. If the Government does want to level up the country, and rebalance the economy so we are no longer so dependent on financial services, it will need, as Johnson argued, to give the state a more strategic role. While many Conservatives accept this as inevitable – and some even embrace it with enthusiasm – others react with horror. And several of these more orthodox, economically liberal Conservatives are members of the PM’s Cabinet.

There is a similar story with fiscal policy. Growing demand for pensions, health services and social care caused by Britain’s ageing population means public spending will need to remain relatively high for years into the future. But the Tory appetite for raising the revenues needed to pay for such spending has rarely been lower.

The rebellion against increasing national insurance contributions to fund social care has focused on the injustice of asking hard-pressed younger workers to protect older people against the risk of losing their property wealth. But if ministers had proposed any other tax rise – through inheritance tax, for example, or the recovery of care costs from a patient’s estate after death – there would still have been a major revolt among Conservative MPs.

The same applies to any increases in spending to fund other government policies. It will not be possible to level up or rebalance the economy without investment in local services on top of investment in transport infrastructure. In particular, it will not be possible to provide a world-class system of technical and vocational education and adult retraining without spending significantly more than we do at present.

Across Whitehall, further uncertainty abounds. The Government is officially passionate about reducing carbon emissions to Net Zero, but the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is rightly sceptical and worries that the costs of doing so will cripple the economy. The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, would like the post-Brexit immigration system to be more restrictive, but the influence of the economic departments – and the Prime Minister’s instincts – mean immigration will remain historically high for years into the future.

Disagreements between ministers and contradictions in the work of government departments are common enough in normal times. But what we are experiencing is something different. With the political objectives he has set for himself, and with Brexit, the recovery from Covid, and the new coalition of voters the Tories represent, the Prime Minister is leading a Conservative government like none before it. But he has not yet convinced his colleagues – in Cabinet and Parliament – of the scale of change required, and the result is uncertainty and confusion.

With the Commons having risen for the summer, and Westminster and Whitehall slowing down, Johnson has a moment to take stock. But when autumn comes, politics will be back with a vengeance. And by then, the Prime Minister needs to be ready to lead his party beyond its comfort zone, with a coherent plan and clear explanation of what exactly he wants his Government to do.