THIS was vintage “Boris Boosterism”. A full-throated roar of optim-ism as post-Covid Britain emerges from pandemic gloom to the sunlit uplands of high-wage, high-employment prosperity.
We are the fastest-growing economy among the West’s richest nations with a million jobs waiting for the hundreds of thousands suddenly freed from furlough.
To add to the upbeat mood of the moment, the name of the sainted Margaret Thatcher was invoked to justify last month’s shocking tax rises.
But even bouncy Boris could not conceal the rocks below the surface — a Great Barrier Reef of national debt, surging inflation and labour shortages. Maybe even more tax rises to come.
But we must not spoil the party. As we wait for this economic miracle to take root, we can sit back and enjoy a Cabinet Cabaret, starring Level-Up flashdancer Michael Gove.
“Let’s hear it for Jon Bon Govi, living proof we represent the most jiving, hip, happening and generally funkapolitan party in the world,” boomed the Prime Minister.
There were plenty more jokes, many in retaliation against last week’s jibes from Labour’s hapless leader, Keir Starmer.
Sir Keir, said the PM, resembled a “seriously-rattled bus conductor pushed this way and that by Corbynite, Sellotape-spectacled” revolutionaries.
This was much livelier than last week’s scum-spitting Labour conference. BoJo has a unique talent for painting catastrophe as pending success, a crisis as a golden opportunity.
We may still be hobbled by Covid travel rules, but soon we will enjoy coast to coast high-speed broadband, new homes for Red Wall voters and a revolution to end “needless bureaucracy”.
Britain has suffered one of the world’s worst Covid tolls, but the pandemic offered a “lightning flash of illumination” of bureaucratic bungling on social care.
“These are problems no government has had the guts to tackle before,” said Boris, as if he was leading a brand new party.
And in some respects, he is. Many Conservatives do not recognise their new excursion into socialist-style tax hikes and unbridled public spending.
Boris recalled his own Covid brush with death, waking to see a huge black hole being dug outside intensive care, as if for someone’s grave, “possibly me”. It has now been transformed into a brand new office block.
DIFFICULT QUESTIONS
He used this to show the way Britain can bounce back to economic health, as we did with Covid by unleashing Oxford’s “magic potion vaccine, with needles going in like collective sewing machines”.
The jaunty speech delighted the Tory faithful who adore Boris, even if it came to a rather mystifying halt after 45 minutes as if he had run out of steam.
Tories had arrived in Manchester determined to enjoy their first live gathering for two years. They went home happy.
But it was hard to disguise the unease even among ministers over Britain’s ballooning debt and the spectre of inflation running out of control. Boris insisted his Government had no alternative but to hurl public money at the crisis.
“Even Margaret Thatcher would not have ignored the meteorite that has crashed through the public finances,” he said.
But while Boris fans want to believe him, they have their doubts. They worry about the cost of zero emission policies, the impact of re-wilding on small farmers who must put beavers ahead of growing food.
They are uncertain about levelling up, especially if taxes rise again to pay for it.
Higher wages are good news for workers, but along with higher gas, petrol and grocery bills, they may trigger an old-fashioned cost-price spiral hammering borrowers and home buyers.
Most voters have forgotten or never experienced the rampant inflation of the 1970s or interest rates hitting 15 per cent on Black Wednesday, 1992.
Boris is right to say firms relied for too long on cheap imported labour and must pay more to hire and train local workers instead. It is true they need to be more efficient and productive. But this won’t happen quickly.
Businessmen loyal to their Tory core worry about finding workers, no matter how much money they offer. Not all of them can be replaced by robots.
The dilemma was summed up after the speech by the free market Institute of Economic Affairs.
WENT HOME HAPPY
“The PM says he wants a high wage economy. That requires gains in productivity, which we would see if the Government started deregulating rather than over-regulating.
“He says he wants a low tax economy, but his government is likely to oversee the highest burden of tax since the Attlee post-war socialist government.
“Wage increases will be passed on in price increases. Making things more expensive will not create a genuinely high wage economy, merely the illusion of one.
“Boris Johnson’s rhetoric is always optimistic and enterprising, but they seem to involve yet more state intervention and spending.”
The Tory faithful went home happy. They love Boris Johnson and want him to succeed. But this time next year they might have some difficult questions to ask.
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