Will the National Insurance hike weaken the Union?

Given the enormous power that Conservative leaders wield within the party, it is not surprising that the party should come to take on the character of its leaders.

In the case of Boris Johnson, it is his protean quality that seems to have rubbed off. Where a previous leader might have had a policy agenda or ideology, today’s Tories have cheery slogans which can mean almost anything.

Thus in the course of half a dozen recent Tory conference events one will have heard at least that many different definitions of ‘levelling up’, while the big corporate lobbies and third sector groups insist that whatever they normally talk about is absolutely essential to whatever ‘levelling up’ is.

I have a sneaking suspicion that ‘defending the Union’ may be going the same way. The Conservatives know that it’s important, but don’t have any intellectually coherent idea of what it entails. As a result, it can mean almost anything.

Canny devolution supporters will thus be able to both spend the extra money buying votes in the usual way whilst also attacking the tax increase as a Westminster imposition

Rishi Sunak provided perhaps the prime example of this.