One the eve of the 2015 election, one that most pollsters thought David Cameron would not win, Boris Johnson gave perhaps the most interesting and insightful interview of his career. Sensing the ball was about to come loose from the back of the scrum, as Mr Johnson might put it, he told the Spectator magazine that the Conservatives were finished if they continued to be seen as defenders of the rich and, particularly, the privileged. He argued that “the wealth gap has been allowed to get too big” and is now “outrageous”. His post-mortem assumed that Mr Cameron was politically a dead man walking and about to be felled in a living standards election. Not for the first time, Mr Johnson’s timing failed him.
Mr Cameron won. Mr Johnson had to wait another four years before he got his chance to run the country. His instincts, however, were right. The Tories are seen as “for themselves”, “out of touch” and for rich families and pinstriped City workers. Voters don’t look at the Conservatives and see themselves. Yet Mr Johnson campaigned to become Tory leader on a platform of tax cuts for the rich combined with a staunch defence of bankers. He was bankrolled by billionaires and hedge fund managers. Mr Johnson’s outreach to the rich was understandable given that six out of seven of the voters he was canvassing do not believe that government should redistribute income from the better-off to those who are less well-off. That explains why Mr Johnson has backed the Laffer curve, a discredited theory that claims lower tax rates for the rich will lead to higher tax revenues. » | Editorial | Friday, July 26, 2019
