‘Partygate’ aside, there are fundamental questions facing this Prime Minister and his government which are even more important, according to Sherelle Jacobs in yesterday’s Telegraph:
“Johnson needs to work out what is the actual point of his premiership. Right now, there is no reforming zeal. Under Prime Minister Boris, the Civil Service remains captive to technocrats, just as under Mayor Boris City Hall remained a monument to Ken Livingston. There is no sense of what the Tories are in power to do. If it isn’t to deliver a strong Brexit, or keep taxes low, or take back control of the borders, or stand up for patriotism, or hold the line against the excesses of socialist utopianism, not least net zero, what is the point of their existence?”
Only time will tell, according to Fraser Nelson in a complimentary article we also enclose. Will he be the small-state Conservative he has professed to be in the past?
Or will he "come to see “more government” as the solution to most problems. If this continues then, as one rebel MP puts it, “we will have no reason for anyone to vote Tory in the next election”.
Some policy suggestions he may think about to rectify the situation are as follows:
"He can cancel the April tax rise – citing the cost-of-living crisis – and roll out a post-omicron recovery plan. He could go all-out for growth, scrap all Covid regulations (including the plan to fire unjabbed NHS staff) and get back to the liberal Conservative agenda on which he stood for leader. The May elections give a chance to see if he can still win votes on a “recovery” theme. The end of omicron gives him a chance to test this – and try to turn a new page."
The author concludes that
"the best outcome for the Tories, still, is that Boris stays, shapes up and starts to govern. He might not get the choice when the Sue Gray report comes out: its contents could, still, finish him. His political life still hangs in the balance, as it has done for so much of his career. To the exhaustion and despair of his admirers, he has always specialised in near-death experiences and Lazarus-style recoveries. He might, yet, have one more left in him."
Both articles can be read here with links to the originals beneath them:
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