Sunday 7 June 2020

The epiphanies of Boris Johnson

The front page of The Sunday Times this morning says a lot.  Johnson has apparently had another epiphany, this time about the economic damage that coronavirus is set to wreak on the jobs market. The ST report puts the lightbulb moment to sometime on Tuesday when he was listening to a presentation by Sunak and Sharma, the Business Secretary. They told him "3½ million jobs would be lost in the hospitality industry if pubs, bars and restaurants were not open to reap the rewards of summer."

This apparently came as a surprise because he is said to have blurted out, "Christ!"

You can read the article that explains it all HERE or HERE (no£). The Sunday Times tweeted its own front page:

It looks as if the PM can only be persuaded of a definite course of action if he's presented with a big shocking number. If you remember, the lockdown followed predictions of 500,000 deaths by Professor Neil Ferguson at Imperial College London using a now discredited computer program to model the spread of the virus.  He then went into full lockdown mode.

Clearly, The Treasury and Sunak have learned a valuable lesson and the 3½ million job figure has sent Johnson into full and totally opposite lift the lockdown mode.

Not only that we get the usual stuff when governments get into deep trouble - masses of policy announcements, most of which will take years to come to fruition. A couple catch the eye. Planning rules are to be overhauled to "kickstart house building and infrastructure spending " according to the report.  Now I know a little about planning and when the Conservatives came to power in 2010 one of the first things they did was to "overhaul" the planning rules. Out went dozens of planning documents and a new - and much shortened  - National Planning Policy Framework came into being under Nick Boles.

Dare I say it, this was supposed to kick-start house building and infrastructure spending. Sadly, it did nothing of the sort.  

If Johnson thinks people will be pleased by having new developments forced on them and their communities, he has never been involved in a planning row. Believe me, nothing energises people quite like a modest extension in a neighbour's garden or the prospect of a huge new housing estate where they used to walk the dog. It is a minefield.

There is mention of backing for a new "fast-track system for developers of high-quality, well-designed buildings". And there will be a "zonal planning system where key decisions will be taken from local councils and handed to development corporations". Golly! Sir Humphrey would have called it 'brave' I think.

Don't forget that half the Tory party sit on planning committees.

In a comment that may prove prescient, The Sunday Times say Cummings is "influential in planning" which may prove right in more ways than one. He jointly owns the house in Durham where he controversially went during lockdown with his wife and son and is now being investigated because it seems the property may not have had the correct (or indeed any) planning approval. 

The property, it is alleged, is one that was formerly a swimming pool which had a roof put over it and then converted into a separate dwelling - the one he actually stayed in. It also seems there is only one property registered in the entire postcode for council tax purposes, so Cummings and his father may be in trouble for that as well.  It couldn't happen to a nicer person.

The other notable point is that Johnson favours borrowing to fund everything while the Treasury is more cautious apparently:

"Johnson is keen to load most of the costs on to borrowing, while Treasury officials fear that would spook the markets and lead to inflation. Civil servants in the Treasury are calling the prime minister “the blue socialist” and “Jeremy Corbyn on steroids”.

What a turn up that would be. Jeremy Corbyn retrospectively accused of parsimony.

If the Treasury are right and all this borrowing does lead to inflation it will not be just this generation who will have cause to rue the day Johnson was elected but the next one and probably the one after that. Our debt pile is growing by the day and will be £2.5trillion very soon. Servicing it may be manageable now when interest rates are 0.1-0.2% but if they get up to 2-3% or more we will be in serious trouble.

I wonder if Boris Johnson will undergo a third epiphany later this month or year when he finally realises what a disaster a no deal Brexit would be?

He is going to look extremely stupid at some point when he accepts the need for an extension. He will look like the last person in the whole country to realise we can't exit without a deal.

All of this coincides with a catastrophic plunge in Johnson's seemingly unassailable popularity. A lead of about 25% or so is now down to just 2% after Labour shook off the Corbyn years, dropped into a phone box and emerged in a tight blue body suit and red cape with the letter S emblazoned across the chest - S for Starmer that is.

Look at this tweet from Naomi Smith, Chair of Best4Britain:
The Conservative party must look at the voting intention polling and despair at what they have elected. Another poll taker in the West Midlands shows the highest polling for Labour since 1997:
So, put a little spring in the step this morning, we may have just turned a corner.
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