Boris will keep losing until he tackles inflation

The Tories took a serious beating in Thursday’s by-elections. Whilst Boris Johnson and his government refuse to take responsibility for the big issue of the day – inflation – and fail to convey any meaningful central purpose to their government (‘levelling up’ being clearly nothing more than an empty soundbite) they will continue to face huge electoral defeats. It really is as simple as that.

When I say the government needs to take responsibility for inflation the immediate question is: ‘So how would you get it down?’ But that is the wrong place to begin. The first thing the government needs to do is to take political and policy responsibility for inflation. At present, whenever he talks about inflation Boris Johnson looks to blame someone else. It’s all the fault of Putin, or of rapacious capitalists forcing up prices, or greedy unions demanding too high wage rises, or deluded Tory backbench MPs calling for tax cuts.