Boris’s ‘New Deal’ is nothing of the sort

The best thing I can say about Boris Johnson is that he’s not a real Tory. The Prime Minister belongs instead to the popular liberal right, though he seems to get less popular by the day. His appeal to right-wing voters is based on his promise to ‘get Brexit done’ and the demented, 30-tweet-thread rage-pain he stirs in the hearts of some progressives. What these supporters have not yet but one day will have to confront is the fact that Boris is not one of them. Not on immigration, not on climate change, not on the culture wars. Anyone who can establish a substantive difference between his response to the riots and that of Sir Keir Starmer, feel free to fire in down in the comments. 

Yesterday’s speech putting investment at the heart of the government’s agenda is another sign that we are not dealing with a conventional Conservative. The speech hit some of the right notes for a government looking to spend its way out of the economic slump inflicted by China’s coronavirus.