Boris Johnson can’t see that his friends are trying to rescue him.
The country – battered and bruised after two years of coronavirus and unnecessarily devastating lockdowns – is facing a cost-of-living crisis worse that many will remember in their lifetimes.
ITV’s trusted consumer champion Martin Lewis this week crystalised the fear of so many who are deeply concerned that when electricity bills skyrocket from April as the price cap is lifted, hardworking families will be facing the choice of whether to ‘heat or eat’.
Yet the big-state Boris Tories – New Labour with a shaggy dog hairstyle – seem to want to continue on an unfathomable march towards becoming the high tax party.
Boris made it clear that he would not go through with his most important Brexit promise to eliminate VAT from electric bills. This was something impossible in the past when we were European Union members.
And, probably because he’s terrified of the earbashing that would come from Carrie at home, he has steadfastly refused to slash the ludicrous green levies that make up an extortionate 23 per cent of all our electricity bills.
So Jacob Rees-Mogg – one of the few senior ministers prepared to stand up for small C conservative principles – suggested a different strategy to Boris and the Chancellor Rishi Sunak in what amounts to a long-awaited Cabinet challenge this week.
Jacob Rees Mogg is the leader of House of Commons. He was photographed outside Downing Street (London) last month
Emboldened by the Tory backbenchers whose rebellion against Plan BS, which forced the PM to avoid further restrictions over Christmas and New Year, he lobbied Boris and Rishi to scrap the unpalatable £12 billion, 1.25 per cent National Insurance increase, due to kick in this April, just as inflation is predicted to soar a further two per cent.
That increase is going to cost middle-income earners around £300 a year, according to the Resolution Foundation.
This unexpected tax was originally intended for social care reform. However, the first use of the funds will be to pay for the post-Covid healthcare catch-up. Government sources are openly concerned that this cash will continue to flow into the NHS.
But the Mogg hadn’t finished there.
He went on to suggest that much of the money could be saved if there was a wholescale cull of the lazy civil servants who have used the pandemic to ‘work from home’ and avoid Whitehall at all costs, when, in fact, they’ve been working out on their expensive Peloton bikes and watching episodes of Loose Women in their pants on the sofa.
Public sector employees could be able to use a loophole to allow them to leave work for up to 28 days on their full wages without having to take a sick note.
Dan Wootton (pictured: “Why is Boris Johnson blind to the fact that his allies want him to be saved from himself?”
My first reaction to Rees-Mogg’s challenge of the newly invented tax is hallelujah that there is at least one true-blue Tory left in the Cabinet prepared to stand up to the PM.
But then I’m filled with frustration as Boris and Rishi dismiss the proposal out of hand and are instead considering yet another socialist policy to bailout the flailing energy industry.
In fact, the Chancellor responded publicly today by saying ‘it is always easy to duck difficult decisions but I don’t think that is the responsible thing to do’, in an apparent swipe at the Mogg that will not go down well with Conservative backbenchers, elected on a low-tax manifesto.
Sunak added: ‘I think people’s priorities are for us to invest in the NHS, to invest in social care and we need to make sure that those investments are funded sustainably. That is what we are doing and now we have got to get on and deliver that change for people.’
Rishi sorry, but voters expected that government reforms and strengthening the health system would be done without increasing taxes.
If that were our desires, we would vote for Corbyn.
They must instantly boost the economy and remove all Covid job-destroying restrictions. This will increase employment, improve industry, and raise wages.
Besides, the polls, especially from the Red Wall seats where the Tories have taken an absolute hammering, should make it obvious that becoming Labour Lite isn’t going to be electorally successful for Boris.
The first time that Labour workers voted for him in 2019, they did so because they felt he would use the Brexit dividend as a way to liberate us from the chaos of excessive taxes and regulation which is often enforced by EU membership.
A London street called Whitehall, which was empty when England was under third-level national lockdown.
In my opinion, the Tories exist to cut the size of government, which is why it’s so disturbing that there are now estimated to be ‘more civil servants than there were at the time of the spending review in 2010’, according to the Institute for Government.
So the question that remains now is will any Cabinet ministers like Rees-Mogg be prepared to do the decent thing and quit like ex-Brexit Secretary Lord Frost, who walked over the government’s inability to live with Covid and the increasing tax burden.
Perhaps Boris’s morphing into the proponent of a nanny state on acid made sense while much of the economy was shut down because of the coronavirus crisis.
But it’s obvious to anyone sane that Omicron marks the beginning of the end of the pandemic, which no longer provides a threat to life where any government restrictions are acceptable.
There is a risk that many Brits will be unable to afford freedom because it is too costly to pay the heating bill, buy groceries and fill the tank.
Rees-Mogg, who spoke in the Commons today, insisted that his party believes in fiscal good sense and said: “There’s no magic money tree.”
But Boris’s biggest weakness as PM is that he expects the British public to be that money tree, dipping into taxpayers’ pockets whenever the going gets tough.
Boris cannot have any post-Covid bounceback without this strategy.