Faced with an improved outlook for growth, Rishi Sunak has opted for more public spending and higher taxes. This was the essence of the chancellor’s budget. Under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives have adopted by choice, and not just as emergency measures due to the pandemic, a strategy of expanding the state. There are worrying economic dangers to this course, and far-reaching implications for the nation’s political debate. In both respects it is a substantial risk for the Tories.
The Conservatives managed in 2019 to sweep up constituencies in the midlands and the north of England that they had never held before. They are counting on maintaining these gains through a levelling-up agenda in which there is, in the prime minister’s words, “a catalytic role
