Why didn't Tory MPs oppose Boris's tax hike?

Boris Johnson has just announced his plans to increase National Insurance by 1.25 per cent for both workers and employers to fund extra spending on the NHS and social care. Johnson framed the measure as necessary to deal with the backlog that had built up during Covid. He claimed that without action hospital waiting lists would reach 13 million. He said that he didn’t break his manifesto promise lightly but that a ‘global pandemic was in no one’s manifesto’.

Of course, the problem with this argument is that the tax promise, as well as the commitment that no one would have to sell their house to pay for social care, were always going to be incompatible.

The danger for Johnson is that what he is announcing today ends up falling between two stools: he damages the Tories’ credibility on tax without managing to get on top of the NHS backlog

Keir Starmer’s response started with a decent joke about how he had as much notice of the Prime Minister’s statement as the Cabinet; it is another sign of how Cabinet government is a fiction these days that ministers were formally told about the proposals this morning.