What are the limits of Boris’s ‘levelling-up’ agenda?

No doubt Boris Johnson has many qualities but the only one that comes to mind is this: he is not a conservative. That realisation may be dawning a little late on his more spirited supporters, who gave short shrift to anyone making this point during the flaxen-haired dauphin’s campaign for the crown, but it sunk in some time ago with his savvier opponents. 

Boris’s non-conservatism is not the primary obstacle to the Labour party (or the broader left) regaining parliamentary power. But it is an added hindrance that could be done without. However, it also presents an opportunity to use a nominally Tory government to advance policies that wouldn’t ordinarily appear in a Tory election manifesto.

A timely example is the £20 uplift to Universal Credit, which was introduced at the outset of the pandemic and also applies to the basic element of Working Tax Credit, but runs out in October.