Boris Johnson deserves the blame for the National Insurance debacle

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Despite only 10 Tory MPs voting against the levy last year, the party is now questioning whether bringing in a tax hike on top of a cost-of-living crisis is really the best idea.

Senior MPs like David Davis are calling for a U-turn. A policy blame-game has begun, too. Fingers are being pointed across No 10 and No 11 as to whose idea this was: the Prime Minister’s or the Chancellor’s?

Is it possible to blame the tax hikes on Johnson, when it’s the Treasury formally ushering them in?

There’s no doubt Rishi Sunak insisted that any social care reform be funded. With inflation looming large and interest rate hikes on the cards, he did not want to gamble with borrowing more money, especially to cover what is day-to-day spending, not pandemic spending.

But the Prime Minister was insist on making social care reform his legacy: this, he decided, would involve a cash splurge, so the options at the time were spending cuts or tax hikes.

With the former ruled out by Johnson, tax hikes were the deeply undesirable, but only obvious, option for finding £12bn to cover Johnson’s policy aims.

Since then, Sunak’s inflation fears have been vindicated, and the Prime Minister managed to secure his hand-out style reforms: rather than guaranteeing extra beds or better care for elderly patients, his measures protect the assets of the rich instead.

Johnson owns these tax hikes, but even he is getting spooked. While Downing Street insists the levy will be implemented this spring, the Prime Minister is now refusing to verbally commit to the NI levy as it was voted through the Commons.

On Monday he reframed his intentions: that “we have to pay for” the National Health Service, but stopped short of saying if it would be through tax rises.

It may prove clever politics, if Johnson goes, to throw out the new tax hikes and disappointing social care reform with it and start again. But this tactic can only go so far.

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