What the papers say: Boris is right about the NHS

Boris Johnson was reportedly humiliated in yesterday’s cabinet following his demand for more money for the NHS. If it was the Prime Minister’s intention to embarrass Boris Johnson it was a mistake, says the Times. In its editorial, the paper calls the ministerial discussions ‘an exercise in staged humiliation rather than consensus-building’. The PM may well be thinking that her ability to survive a tumultuous few months now means ‘that she is not only safe but steadily confounding her critics’. Such thinking would also be wrong, the paper argues, pointing out that Boris’s ‘return to trouble-making…reflects deepening frustration with Downing Street on both wings of the party’. Britain needs ‘drive and dynamism’ from its government; instead, it gets ‘hesitation and indecision’. Sir Nicholas Soames’s #dulldulldull tweet has the ring of truth about it, argues the paper. And it is also clearly the case that the leadership the Tories ‘crave’ is badly missing.