Mark Littlewood
The Daily Telegraph
Getting Brexit done and the success of the vaccine rollout have carried Boris Johnson’s government thus far, says Mark Littlewood.
But neither is going to matter much in the months and years to come. After coronavirus
restrictions are lifted (see page 8), “normal bread-and-butter issues” will return to salience, and “the Conservative cupboard is extraordinarily bare”. “Levelling up” and “build back better” are “mere catchphrases, not serious strategies”. But they signal that the government “genuinely appears to believe that the woes of left-behind Britain have been due to the state being an insufficiently large part of people’s lives”. This ignores the fact that the richer parts of the UK are richer thanks to their thriving private-sector businesses and their low taxes as a proportion of income. Yet the dire state of the public finances post-Covid means that tax rises are inevitable. “In a year’s time, Brexit and vaccines will be memories, not policy positions.
The Conservatives’ basic offer of a high tax, high spend, heavily regulated economy is what will remain. The millions of voters who wanted a buccaneering, enterprising and liberated post-pandemic, post-Brexit Britain will feel not just disappointed, but politically homeless.”
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